So it starts...

So it starts in October where I join a popular slimming website and am told I should be burning 200 calories a day, surely the cheapest way of doing this is either a work out DVD at home or running as both involve a small cost to start then free from then on.

After purchasing a £22 pair of running trainers I started running and would get 0.5 of a mile down the street and have to stop this was due to previous smoking and a large lack of any exercise. I pushed on with this stop start way of running but went 1 mile around the block which took me probably near on 25 minutes. I remember that first day walking back through the door to Kevin saying that was quick and me puffing and panting thinking I’m glad I only spent £22 on the shoes as don’t think I will keep this up.

I continued pushing myself to run although maybe once or twice a week at most but soon found that I had sustained a simply foot injury, which I put down to the cheap shoes I was running in. I suppose spending £100 on a new pair of better running shoes was the kick up the backside I needed to run abit more, this and discovering the miracle of a Garmin Forerunner 110 recommended to me by a fellow dieter on the website forums. It’s funny how much further a mile actually is compared to what you estimate in your head.

Along with my Camel Bak I would say the Garmin Forerunner is the best bit of kit I’ve ever bought.  This enabled me to quickly build up to running 3 miles minimum taking around 33 minutes. I soon found after I had lost the weight I intended to lose I needed motivation to run and thought what better way than to enter a Half Marathon 13.1 miles and run for charity that way I’d have to stick with it and not let people down.  So I entered the Litchfield Half Marathon taking place on the 6^th May 2012.. plenty of time to get training.

I find with running you get itchy feet as it were and I certainly need a goal to work towards with this in mind and feeling I needed to get a sense of a race environment and test my training so far I entered the Blymhill 10k on the 22^nd Jan 2012.

I remember the night before very well as I didn’t get a wink of sleep and any sleep I did get was spent dreaming that I ran so slowly I was lost as all the Marshalls had packed up and gone home!