A challenge to be proud of

Regular readers (there must be some of you) will know I struggle with running, mentally as well as physically, but the mental side lets me down much more than the physical. In chatting with Davie Mooney about what I can do to try and crack this (it's a conversation I have a lot with people like Davie) I mused that maybe it was time to try another 'RED' chain, by which I mean Run Every Day. He suggested I focus on running without any walk breaks, and set me a challenge. First day, run for 1 minute. That's all, just 1 minute, no walk breaks. Day 2, run for 2 minutes. Day 3, run for 3 minutes. And so on. For 30 days. Thirty. Days.

I thought about it, and said yes. However then I really thought about it, and realised that so far in 2014, since everything went a bit pear-shaped for me in late 2013, I've not ran for more than 5 or 6 minutes without a walk break. And now not only was I going to be running 29 minutes consecutively, but the day beforehand I would have ran 28 minutes, and the day after, 30. This was going to be a major challenge for me!! I thought about it, but I knew I had to give it a try. I've only ran 30 minutes without a walk break a total of six, maybe seven, times. Ever. Can I do this?? I doubted myself immediately, but as I'm currently trying to reduce the pressure from myself, and stop giving myself such a hard time all the damn time, I decided what happened, happened. If I made it to day 6, for example, that was brilliant. If I couldn't manage day 7, I would try again the next day. There's no pressure here - I just want to do my very best, and try to get out of the mental habit of thinking I "have" to walk after a couple of minutes.

So, how am I doing? Well, today is day 9, and I'm thrilled to say I'm doing it, I'm bloody doing it!!! Yesterday I ran for 8 consecutive minutes, today I ran for 9. No walk breaks. None! I'm very excited. I'm not saying it's easy, because omg it's really not, but today I actually felt 'comfortable' during my run. Ha!! Days 6 and 7 I struggled with those 'give up, give up, give up' voices in my head at around the 4 minute mark, but kept it going. Days 8 and 9, the struggles were much quieter. And this is how it's going... (I'll have you know, I've just had to teach myself how to do a table in HTML, I'm almost as proud of myself for that as I am for the running.)

	Time (mins)	Pace mins/mile
Day 1 .	01:00	09:28
Day 2	02:00	10:31
Day 3	03:00	11:17
Day 4	04:00	10:47
Day 5	05:00	11:36
Day 6	06:00	10:51
Day 7	07:00	11:17
Day 8	08:00	11:41
Day 9	09:00	11:39

So, I think we're calling this a success!! Pace isn't all that important, because it's all just about beating that voice inside my head that tells me to give up, but I find it interesting watching how I get on, and I'll track it over the month. I'm under no illusions, here, it's going to get more and more difficult as the remaining 21 days continue, but the last time I ran 9 consecutive minutes without a walk break was the Newcastle Racecourse half marathon 7 months ago. So, yay!! I'm going to keep it going, and give it my best.

Most days, my run is just a short run/walk warm-up, the number of minutes run, then a short cool-down run/walk. Day 6 was the only day of the challenge so far when it differed, as I decided to go run a 5km parkrun, and for my 67th parkrun I headed up to Perth for the first time on that course; my plan was, run the first 6 minutes, then try to maintain a run/walk pattern of about 1 min/1 min for the rest of the run. Really happy to say that's exactly what I did. I finished the parkrun in 38:25, still quite some way off my best, but well over a minute faster than any other parkrun I've done this year. I'll take that!! It was tough-going, but Perth parkrun is a nice flat route, some on tarmac and some on grass, and I was pleased to meet my target for the day, which was the 6 minute run without walking. I'll stick with Perth parkrun the rest of this month, and so do my 13 minute, 20 minute, and 27 minute run there too. And look, it's a minor miracle, I appear to have been smiling when I ran!! (I'm not terribly happy with this photo, but I can't escape the fact it's what I look like until I get all this extra weight lost, lol. And apparently the smile isn't photoshopped on, so hurrah!!)


(Photo courtesy of Alison Downey.)