Thursday 28 January 2016

Training partners

Now if you're anything like me then you'll need a load of motivation to go for a run, which is why I very rarely go out for one by myself. Either it'll be running with my partner Ali, our dog Chewy, or other friends who like to run.



The great thing about running with someone is that there is always motivation to keep on going - it's that instinct that you can't let the other person down by quitting halfway through, and you want to help them make sure that they don't quit either especially if they are training for a specific event (as is often the case with Ali).




There's also the competitive nature of training with someone, although that doesn't always go down well when you are running with them... All the apps that are available such as Strava, Nike Plus and Map My Run do allow you to see where you have come in various leaderboards on the route, but it's still not the same as seeing someone going up a climb faster than you or losing the final sprint of the session. I have had a couple of times when I've decided to sprint the final part of the run without warning, which hasn't amused Ali, especially when I have the house key!! Haha.

Last night was a prime example of getting motivation from others. We had a friend over who attends a lot of events with Ali, and they had both had a bit of a rubbish day at work and then we had the check up at the vets for her dogs... All in all, not much motivation to go out for exercise afterwards! They still got me out, and we all managed a pretty good paced run (see the Strava link below).
With my annual targets it's also the motivation of how much others have run in a year - Ali and Emma are training for a marathon in April, and so have done a lot more than me so far, but it's still having to admit to them and myself that I'm behind on monthly target that's getting me going!!

Oh, and I've also got this sweet little one to motivate me to run a bit more, although I do have the excuse of not running as far for a while with her!!


One Life - Live It, Love It

Monday 11 January 2016

2016 - What I want to do...

It's a new year (in case you hadn't seen from the training posts I've been putting up!), so it's now time that everyone is setting targets for the coming twelve months.


I'm no different, but it's always difficult to set things that I'm going to have a chance of achieving, but still difficult enough to give me a proper challenge...

As a base mark I'm setting three distance goals to complete for the end of 2016:

Cycle 2,000km
Run 1,000km
Swim 50km




Now for a lot of people this might not really sound like a proper challenge, but if you have a look at my Strava activities over the past couple of years then you'll see that the amount of exercise I've been doing has been heading in the wrong direction as work and home life seem to get in the way!

Creative Commons

The swimming aspect of this will be even more of a challenge as I have done very very little of this since I even left junior school, and when I say very little in mean only two proper swimming sessions (of around 400m) and a couple of splashing sessions when on holiday in the past six years!!!

So for those who were paying attention will have probably worked out that I need to roughly swim 1 km, run 20 km and cycle 40 km a week to hit these targets - good luck to me with this as well!!
I have a few events that I'm already signed up to during the year that'll help with the distance and motivation during the year so I'll be sure to mention them as they are coming up.



Another thing that'll really help with the motivation is if you guys can join in with me on this - in order to compete the weekly distance on the bike I'm going to have to swap the drive one day a week for a cycle, and whilst there are the obvious things like going for my target and getting fit again there is also the benefits of less environmental impact. I'm tracking this on my DoNation campaign and would really like it if others could pledge alongside - each one only lasts a couple of months, but do it for a few months in a row then you could make it a habit of a lifetime!

Click here to view the campaign page, and comment below or on the social media pages to let me know that you've joined in!


One Life - Live It, Love It