Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Day 17, run 1

I went out for my first Up and Running run today!

I'd downloaded an app called Runkeeper but hadn't got it working yet. So I stuck to the fairly low-tech method of the stopwatch function on my phone, plus a pre-plotted route and pencil and paper. I'm not going to post the full details, but Week 1 involves a 1K walk and then another 1K adding in some running, and I'm going to list the times for those parts of the workout.

I decided to go running in the industrial estate close to my house. Ooh, the glamour - but it's actually fairly nice: one side of the road has trees running along a riverbank with a golf course and a large hill on the far bank. The other side is metal warehouse-looking buildings but you can't have everything! It's reasonably flat, which is rare around here, and the traffic is quiet. It takes just under five minutes to walk there from my house, which is handy.

The fast-walk stage went fairly well but felt like hard work. By this point I was quite warm (not going to wear a longsleeved top next time) and my feet were hurting, because although I know that my feet expand when they get warm, I always lace my trainers too tightly to start with. The last bit of the km was on the road, and as I was marching along uphill past some roadworks, one of the guys called out "Shouldn't you be running?" Thanks, pal.

After pausing to stretch again and loosen my laces a bit I ran back the same way. I didn't run anything like the whole time, but it seemed to pass much quicker so I knew I was managing to go faster. By the time I got back to my start point I was glowing all over!

The numbers:

1K walk: 10.48 (approx, because I was so relieved to stop and sort my shoes out that I forgot to hit stop on the stopwatch for a few seconds)
Freestyle 1K run: 7.42 (much better than I was hoping!)