Matt Gets Running

I’m sit­ting in a café writ­ing this blog entry, look­ing smugly out at the weather I would have been slog­ging wetly through if I’d gone out for my nor­mal Sunday run. It’s a typ­ic­ally Brit­ish Spring selec­tion of ran­dom sun­shine, showers and hail out there, rotat­ing about every five minutes. Nice. Luck­ily, I took a […]

From recent exper­i­ence, here are a few tips on how not to train for a half mara­thon: Pick a half-marathon that’s run at the begin­ning of March. This makes sure you have to keep train­ing through the freez­ing, dark winter months. The Bath Half Mara­thon is an ideal choice. Pick an over-ambitious train­ing plan that […]

Although this was only meant to be a 2K fun-run, actu­ally get­ting to the start line felt more like a mara­thon. But finally, after find­ing a suit that actu­ally fit me, and after the first attempt was called off due to ice, the Bris­tol Santas on the Run race for Children’s Hos­pice South West went […]

When someone at work emailed me about Santas on the Run, it didn’t take me long to sign up. I mean, for only a ten­ner you get to run around Bris­tol city centre in a Santa cos­tume with a bunch of other nut­cases without actu­ally being arres­ted. And you get to keep the Santa suit […]

Today’s half mara­thon — my first — went pretty well all round. I was a bit wor­ried by the amount of rain I could hear before I set out, but it turned into occa­sional drizzle for the race, which is per­fect jog­ging weather, really — no need to worry about over­heat­ing. I kept jog­ging from […]

So, I reckon it’s about five weeks until the Bris­tol Half Mara­thon. *Gulp*. So, please help motiv­ate me to keep on run­ning, no mat­ter what the weather (and in the UK on the 5th Septem­ber, let’s face it, it could be any­thing from a heat­wave to a hail­storm) by spon­sor­ing me to run for my […]

Ah, yes, the hot­test day of the year. Just the time to get out into the sun­shine at nearly noon and run 5 kilo­metres wear­ing y-fronts. Oh yes. Although I do have a sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that the three laps of the bloody great field we ran around wasn’t quite 5K, but I don’t sup­pose it […]

I’m still not feel­ing 100%. This morn­ing, though, I was struck by a blind­ing flash of the obvi­ous: if I’m not feel­ing 100%, I don’t have to run 100%! So, fig­ur­ing that build­ing back up momentum is more import­ant than stick­ing to my usual 5K min­imum, I went out for a nice little 3K jog in […]

Hello, lovely read­ers! You’re look­ing great today. Have you lost weight? Yes, you can tell I’m but­ter­ing you up for some­thing, can’t you? Turns out that it’s only a couple of months until the Bris­tol 10K, which is hap­pen­ing on 9th May. My very first race! So, as you might expect, I’m here, cap in hand, […]