The Long Road Back

Well, gosh. I rather gave up on running. My last run was on September 5th, 2014. I didn’t know I was giving up back then. It just sort of happened.

And so I took five years off. More than five, in fact, because I’m not running again. Yet.

I put on a lot of weight. I’ve also taken some back off, which is good, but I’m still rather heavier than “running weight”. One of the good things about the quantified self is that I normally have some stats look at, and this is no exception. I’m currently about eight kilos heavier than I was back at that last run. My body composition is also rather less good—40.3% fat mass as opposed to 36.5%.

(More of my muscle is in my arms, now, too, which doesn’t help much for jogging. But at least that’s because I’ve kept up a steady dumbbell workout regime for the last year or so.)

All in all, I feel rather too lardy to run. My knees are a bit creaky and I’m not sure I’m ready to put myself “out there” as a runner right now.

But perhaps I can get there in the next six months. I’m doing yoga and weights, but the most important thing, really, is to drop some more fat, so I’m going to start being rather more careful about what I eat and how much of it I eat over the next few months.

I may even blog a little about my progress, because it’s good to blog, and I haven’t been doing any writing anywhere for ages

So, that’s me at the moment. Not sure how long it’ll take, or how often I’ll be blogging about it, but basically, I’m back, baby.

https://gph.is/2EaUkAA

Blistering Height

I won’t be running this week, I think. Shame, as I’d hoped to start building up from my recent 10K practice run towards the Bristol Half Marathon, which is rushing towards me very quickly.

On the plus side, the reason is because I walked up Snowdon for the first time. My friend Chris loves the hills, so for his stag do there was lots of walking, wild camping, and all sorts of outdoor stuff. Because I’m a not-as-fit city boy, I only nipped along for one of the hills, and even then I got the train down from the top. However, Snowdon is the highest peak in England and Wales, second only to Ben Nevis in the UK, so I don’t feel too ashamed of copping out only once I’d walked from the bottom to the top. 1049 metres total climb, according to RunKeeper. I don’t normally do my kilometres upwards

One of the reasons I didn’t join the rest of the gang for the downhill trot was blisters. A post-mortem on my walking shoes shows that I should probably have replaced them six months ago; the insoles were worn through to the underlying rubber in the instep, which is where my blisters appeared. Ah well. Live and learn. Or limp and learn, perhaps.

So, I’ve had some very enjoyable exercise, but now I’m going to have to stick some blister plasters on (these Compeed things are bloody brilliant, by the way) and not do too much walking or running for a few days. Hopefully things will clear up soon…