Matt Gets Running

Today I ran the Bris­tol 10K, mostly with my friend (and erstwhile boss) Mike. Mike had ori­gin­ally planned to part­ner up with a friend who’s a fair bit faster than me, but she got a hip injury at the last minute, unfor­tu­nately. So, I rebel­li­ously brought my green-numbered self into the red lane with Mike […]

I’m ill. Which is fine. I’d spe­cific­ally planned to do bugger-all dur­ing the period between Christ­mas and New Year, and if you’re going to loaf about unshaven for a few days, you might as well fit a cold in while you do it. It helps that — so far — it’s just a reg­u­lar winter lurgy […]

It was a lovely day for a jog in Bris­tol. I was a bit delayed get­ting star­ted. I nor­mally walk across the top of a lock gate on my walk to the start of the towpath, but this morn­ing the lock gate was open to let a little batch of ships and row­ing boats out […]

It has not been a bril­liant run-up to the Bris­tol 10K. I feel pretty good, mind you, and I’m sure there’ll be no prob­lem doing it. But I’d had hopes of los­ing more weight (I’ve plat­eaued since I was ill a few weeks ago. I’m well now, just not back on the wagon.) And I […]

Like I said in my last update, I fan­cied get­ting out for a nice long run this week­end, and this morn­ing I made good on that. I ran from home, out along the towpath under the Sus­pen­sion Bridge, all the way to the far entrance to Leigh Woods, then up into the forest. I did a […]

Yup, as you can see by the scene behind the scary, wonky-sunglassed weirdo in the pic­ture, it was a really nice day today. And I went on a route through Leigh Woods, which was gor­geous. Not con­tent with doing the 8K through the woods like I did last time, going out along the towpath, up […]

No per­sonal best for the 5K this even­ing — that still remains at the just-under-31 minutes I man­aged back in Novem­ber, run­ning as fast as I sus­tain­ably could all the way. But tonight, I think, was the fast­est since then, at 32:26. And con­sid­er­ing I did a nor­mal jog on the way out, then just did […]

Okay, back on the road again tonight after my birth­day break. Tonight I tried a bit of speed­work, doing some fartlek train­ing where I sprin­ted a bit and then recovered for a while at nor­mal pace, sprin­ted again, and so on. I trav­elled out down the Port­way as nor­mal, because every­one seems to say that warming […]

Def­in­ite rule of run­ning: once you’ve done a dis­tance once, it’s a lot easier, psy­cho­lo­gic­ally, to do it again. Today I was feel­ing pretty good, and I’d had a decent night’s sleep, and the weather looked okay, so I decided to do 10K again. And here it is on RunKeeper.com. It was actu­ally 10.42km, about the […]

…well, deep puddles, any­way. I want to push my week­day runs out a bit fur­ther, so I figured I’d do 6K this even­ing. It var­ied between drizzle and out­right rain, but it was still good. I felt fine, and kept up a nice pace. About the only thing that wasn’t great were my calves/ankles, and […]