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Intentionally skipping the weekend, over the last eight days on six I’ve run 2½ miles per day in an average time of nearly 24½ minutes. This is skewed slightly because the first of the six runs was accompanied by my dog, and I ended running for a total of 32 minutes. If I ignore that result then my average is just under 23 minutes which is much better.

Todays run was completed below my average time, and involved only one stop! When running my circuit clockwise there a flat of about 140 yds then a downhill of maybe 200 yds. I started running my circuit clockwise because when I originally ran it anti-clockwise I hated this hill at the end. It’s better getting it over with at the beginning, but it’s still awkward, especially trying to tackle it with any speed. Today though I treated it as a warm up – I went at an easy pace until I got to bottom, did some more stretching then tackled the rest of the run. I’m not sure if it was because of doing, or general improvement on my part but I didn’t feel the need for a break on the rest of run which is a great progress.

I drove the circuit last night, and it looks like my pedometer is slightly out, but not enough to be concerned about. I’ll correct it at some point.

Lessons learnt so far:

• Don’t run too soon after a meal. The previous two runs before today were done in the evening about an hour after the family meal. Both times I got a very nasty stitch which I don’t normally
• Don’t hold anything. I was using my Pocket PC Phone as my MP3 player. Due to it’s size, I had to hold it in my hand, which got very annoying. For the last two runs I’ve used my daughter’s £20 MP3 player that hangs round your neck. Audio quality sucks (as you’d expect from a device with that price) but running is much easier when your hands are free.
• Choice of listening is important. I started out listening to music, then I switched to podcasts (more on this in another post). Now I’ve switched back to music. I’ve tried various types of music (again, more on this in another post), but the best type I’ve found has been from the Electronic genre. I discovered this by adding Hey Boy Hey Girl from Surrender by The Chemical Brothers to one of my playlists. As soon as the track got going my pace naturally picked up and I pushed myself harder whilst listening to it. I felt I performed much better during that run and it was all down to the music, but boy was I tired afterwards!