The other day my gigging buddy, Lorna, sent me a link about Juneathon, an annual challenge to run and blog every day through June. I remember her doing it last year and being impressed with her dedication to the cause. It seemed like an excellent idea – for those people who called themselves ‘runners’, which she was and I certainly was not.
Time rolls on and things have changed; I started so-called ‘running’ at the start of February and last weekend Jude, Lorna and myself ran the Manchester 10k. Now I’m faced with about 20 weeks until the Birmingham half marathon. Juneathon comes at a good time; post 10k I could happily put my feet up, get back to programming and forget about the running. I think I’d get a gold medal for sitting on my arse. Instead the challenge is to get out every day – I like that – and then, working backwards from the half marathon, a 16 week training programme would start at the beginning of July. It all seems to fit together very nicely.
There is the small matter of a trip to the Glastonbury Festival at the end of the month. A week drinking cider, listening to bands and lolloping around in mud. There will be showers where we’re staying. It’s a long story, but I’m not camping within the festival site this year. Consequently running might be possible… but if I’m up until 6am, waving my arms like I just don’t care then running might seem a bit ambitious. Let’s see how it goes.
My plan was to run 30 minutes, down the A59 to Burscough for 15 minutes and then back again. At my pace, it would be somewhere around 4k – slow, I know but give me a break, I had 44 years of mastering the art of sitting down. It would be a gentle re-introduction after taking five days off after the Manchester 10k.
It felt like the start of a new chapter, removing the timer tag strings from my running shoes marking the end of that challenge and stepping out into a bright sunny morning to start a new one. If I started running before 7am, it would feel amazing (even if it *was* 6:58). That didn’t quite happen. My fancy running watch couldn’t get a satellite connection and so I found myself at the end of the drive, wrist pointing towards the skies, hoping that it would lock in to the GPS. So I just missed my target of starting before 7.
The run was unremarkable. My average pace was average – 7 minutes 24 per km, which is about right, perhaps a bit slow for me these days. For the first 10 minutes, I was certain that I was running as if I were doing a chicken-dance, hobbling around and feeling stiff as anything despite stretching and doing a (little) warm up beforehand. At various points, my right foot foot, knees and thighs gave me a bit of gyp, but each passed after a couple of minutes. Nothing to be alarmed about.
At one point, a pick up truck mounted the pavement just in front of me, and I thought that the driver was trying to take me out. Instead, it appeared that he was delivering his girlfriend back home, early morning. His mind must have been on other things.
The 30 minute plan didn’t work out. Once I’d run 15 minutes I felt bad about not running 5k, so I kept going to Platts Lane and turned around.
So at least I started. More tomorrow. Juneathon doesn’t run and blog itself, you know.
