I came to the conclusion the other day that I feel the same about running as I do about cleaning: I like having done it and that I can listen to a podcast while doing it.
The difference with running is that I realised late last year that you can get medals for doing what is just a hobby to me. Which I am unreasonably excited about. And you don't have to run a long way either.
After googling races I found the best way to find a race is to remember which ones I've seen mentioned locally. So my plan for this year is to do a 5k in the next town. I know the distance is do-able, but you can't wear headphones. Which means nothing to take my mind off it and no feedback about how fast I'm going or how far I've run. (I know you can get watches that tell you this information, but I can't read a watch while running, so it seems like a waste of £100+)
And then there's a 8k (5 mile) race that is so nearby the route goes past my house. Which is a bit more of a stretch because the furthest I ran last year is 7k. I did have plans to gradually work my way up to 8k, but then I got ill and couldn't run for weeks, then it got cold. My asthma limits how fast I can run when it's cold and quite a bit of winter means that limit is walking. Hopefully when the weather improves I can start getting the distances up again.
The difference between Park Run (which I've done three times) and a race is that a Park Run you can just rock up to if you feel like it that morning/depending on what the weather's like. With a race you register and pay in advance, so you're running whatever (to a point, obviously, if you're ill or injured you can't run and if it's way too hot the race is likely to be cancelled anyway).
Both the races I plan to do this year have a similar number of runners as at my local Park Run, so it'll feel pretty familiar. Next year though I'm thinking of doing a much bigger, slightly less local 10km. And by bigger I mean about 40 times more people. So this year my goal is to run 10km.
But I don't have plans to run further than that. I saw something that said that running boosts your immune system, but only up to 1 hour 30 minutes. If you run for longer than that it has the opposite effect. I already get everything going, so that's the last thing I want. I ought to be able to run 10km in less than 1 hour 30 minutes, so 10km will be my limit of the distance I run.
I saw something somewhere where someone was talking about PBs just for the year. Which makes sense because as you get older you just can't run as fast. I can't run that fast at the moment, but I'd like to get my 5km lifetime PB down by 30 seconds to 34 minutes.
Mirrored from my blog.
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