Welcome to my blog!

What is this blog all about?

This blog is going to be centred mainly around running, with a few general posts on the subject of health and fitness.

I have just completed my first year of study as a Physiotherapy student. Now that I have a few months before I start my second year in October, I thought I'd devote some time to writing a blog in relation to one of my main hobbies - running.

It's fair to say that the last few months have been extremely challenging for many reasons. When I completed my first (and so far, only) marathon back in October 2019, I had no idea that a global pandemic would scupper any chances of taking part in another organised marathon in 2020.

Thanks, Coronavirus!

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I was running 4-5 days a week. My running schedule was quite busy. I combined group training runs, Parkrun on a Saturday morning, long runs on a Sunday with a small group of friends and individual runs.

All of that changed on March 23rd. Boris Johnson announced the beginning of lockdown. Our duty was to stay at home, save lives and protect the NHS (remember that?) We were allowed to exercise outdoors once per day, and even then, only with other members of our household.

In the early days of lockdown, I lost all motivation to run. As it turns out, my experience was very common. I took a month off running but I didn't stop exercising entirely. I made the most of the unseasonable spring warmth and discovered some fantastic new walking routes in my local area.

Cherry blossom

By early May, I was running again. Slow and steady at first, then gradually I eased myself back into my pre-Coronavirus running routine.

The long, slow runs helped me to keep my pre-exam stress levels down. The faster runs and workouts, though difficult to do on my own, gave me something to aim for.

Once again, running was a big part of my life but things were far from normal.

There was still no Parkrun. We still couldn't meet up with more than one other person outside the household, and every single race that I'd signed up for was cancelled.

The situation today

Here in the UK, we're now allowed to exercise outdoors as many times as we like - provided we keep two metres apart from everyone else who isn't in our immediate household. We also have to limit ourselves to groups of six, which means that regular training sessions are out of the question.

Anyway, despite all of the uncertainty and disruption to normal life, I've set myself a goal:

I'm going to run 5K in 20 minutes.

That's 4 minutes per kilometre, times five, without slowing down or stopping.

How far off my target am I?

Well, I achieved a personal best of 20:24 on a solo run on 31st May. It can't be that difficult to shave another 25 seconds off my 5K PB, can it? All I have to do is run 5 seconds per kilometre faster than my previous attempt 12 days ago. Easy, right? We'll see.

I'm following an adapted training plan that allows me the freedom of doing my usual 1-2 long runs every week (because I love endurance runs), while doing some speed-specific workouts too.

I did a tempo run today. Tempo runs are the bread and butter of speed-endurance training, and they're supposed to be run at a 'comfortably hard' pace. The pace was mildly uncomfortable, but not so painful that I had to scrape myself off the floor at the end. That would have been embarrassing.

Ideally, I'd like to achieve my 20-minute 5k by the end of July. This gives me about six weeks of solid training to achieve my goal, and I think that's realistic. 

What next?

If you would like to hear about my running journey, please follow this blog! As well as documenting my own progress in training, I'm also going to write a few posts on the subject of running in general - and how to keep motivated during the times of social distancing - and I might sprinkle in a few posts about fitness in general.

These are challenging times for all of us, and I'd like to share my thoughts on how we can inspire each other to keep going and achieve our fitness goals.

Sometimes I feel heavy and lumbering like a buffalo, and sometimes I feel like a gazelle with trainers!