Matt Gets Running

The Bris­tol 10K was my first race, this time last year. It’s a good, fun race, with a whole lot of people — 9,000 fin­ished this year — and it’s right on my door­step. It only takes me twenty minutes to get to the start line, and then we run right back past my flat […]

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 […]

Not a ter­rible effort tonight, though it didn’t go as planned. I’ve got a bit bored with the run/walk com­bin­a­tion of the Run­Keeper “Fit­ness­Plan” I’m fol­low­ing, so I thought I’d just go out for a nor­mal run. As it is though, partly because I’m tired today, and partly because I was overam­bi­tious with my speed at […]

Today was another jog along the Port­way, accord­ing to the train­ing plan thingy I’m fol­low­ing. Con­sid­er­ing it was four-minutes-running/one-minute-walking (x8) my over­all pace was pretty good. Any­way. Not a thrill­ing run, and it’s late, so I won’t go on about it

I ran a bit too fast at the begin­ning of tonight’s little train­ing jog down the Port­way. I’m still get­ting the hang of what kind of speeds are sus­tain­able for me. As a res­ult, I slowed down gradu­ally from there until the last couple of inter­vals. Still, a good aver­age pace for slow-ol’-me. More on […]

I was in Lon­don at the week­end. I ate most of it. Well, it felt like it, any­way. My friend Kavey invited me along for the week­end to cel­eb­rate her recent birth­day, and we went along to Chocol­ate Unwrapped, and also had a fab after­noon tea at the astound­ingly styl­ish Bob Bob Ricard. That meant […]

Very quick catchup — did a simple 5K last night. I think I was a bit faster than my recent aver­ages, but it’s hard to tell, as I added a timed walk­ing warm-up to this, and Run­Keeper still, annoy­ingly, doesn’t knock off the warm-up from its aver­age speed pace cal­cu­la­tions, so the five minutes of […]

Just a quick 5K down the Port­way for me this even­ing. After I got back, I signed up for one of RunKeeper’s new “vir­tual Fit­ness­Classes”, which I’m hop­ing will give me a train­ing plan to stick to through the winter. My half-marathon speed was really quite rub­bish — hardly sur­pris­ing given that I’ve never pushed […]

Bleh. That was one of those runs where I just knew I didn’t want to be run­ning as soon as I star­ted. It didn’t get much bet­ter, either, as I struggled fairly slowly through 5K. Still, at least I did struggle through. Some­times just get­ting through it is enough. I think it’s because I’m tired. […]

“I don’t feel too steady on my feet… ”…I feel hol­low I feel weak” Well, I did a bit. And just as that line in the Stone Roses She Bangs the Drums came around, too. But I had just powered up Bridge Val­ley Road delib­er­ately a bit faster than nor­mal, to see if I could improve […]