Today is the first anniversary of my first proper run. It was on Sunday 27th last year when I resolved to try out running during a hungover conversation in a cafe in Prestatyn. I wasn’t really sure how it would go, but I was recommended two apps – runkeeper and couch to 5k. I installed these and off I went, on the treadmill, to see how I’d get on.

We had bought the treadmill, probably about 10 years earlier when we lived in our last house. Back then I’d given it a few goes, but had flagged, tried running outside a couple of times, but had given up. It was a bit of a failure. This time I was determined to give it a good shot.

By the third or fourth day, I decided to run outside. With the encouragement of friends on Facebook, who had been an amazing source of encouragement. And so I plugged away at it – through most of February.

Jude had signed up to do the Manchester 10k in May and so I signed up along with Lorna – who had been encouraging me to run. When I completed the race it felt like the most brilliant thing possible. By that point the two of us had signed up for the Birmingham half marathon in October.

It’s fair to say that rather than pick up, the training took a bit of a nose-dive after the 10k. There was work to be done. I’d had a big customer go bust on me and there was a bit of scrambling with work to make the numbers add up again.

I tried running the Juneathon, but I had hurt my foot in the 10k and it scuppered me within a couple of days of the month starting. I did lots of other exercising through the month, but I’d fallen at the first hurdle. I was also having trouble with my chest and had to go to the doctors to get checked over and they prescribed some asthma prevention drugs. I’d had asthma when I was young and was concerned when it appeared to become a problem again.

Then it was summer holidays and then our Autumn in Abersoch. It was difficult finding time to run when I had the children by myself, so could only get out when Jude or my parents were down at the same time as me.

By the time we went to Northern Ireland with Lorna and Matthias I was feeling pretty unfit and ill-prepared, and I struggled on our runs when we were there.

The prospect of a half marathon in two months had me out running again and I maintained an ad-hoc training schedule; basically making it up as I went along. This was bad. The other bad thing was that Lorna had an accident and her injury meant that she couldn’t do the run in October. Through September and October it felt like it was a very lonely pursuit, there were pressures around work and I was very anxious about how the half marathon would go. By the time race day came, I was in a bad way and my head was not at all right. I got around the course in three hours, but my heart wasn’t in it.

In retrospect it’s a shame, and perhaps I should have pulled out. My feeling earlier in the year had been that if I could run a half marathon, then I could do anything. By the time the race came along I felt pretty isolated, alone and on the day, unhappy.

Training tailed off again but picked up again when we decided to do the Milton Keynes half marathon in March 2014. I started getting back in to something more like regular training again mid-way through December and resolved to get through Janathon – which is one run and one weights session from completion.

So I’ve got through a year of enthusiastic starts, followed by stop-start training, a 5k then three 10k’s and a half marathon completed.

Throughout the year my friends have been a brilliant source of encouragement and by sharing runs, problems and successes on Facebook there has always been someone to cheer or to lend some words of advice. It’s really appreciated.

I’m glad that I’ve done Janathon. It’s cleared my head of a lot of rubbish that was floating around. In particular I’m glad that I’ve basically stuck to the half marathon programme. That was my downfall last year and the lesson learned is to stick to the damned training programme, through hell or high water. The other lesson has been to do the strength training, that has helped a lot.

I’m aiming for 2014 to be a lot more disciplined. I’m tempted to enter a full marathon in the autumn (maybe Amsterdam). This would mean that I’d have very little time to rest and slip into bad habits after the MK half.

Oh, and I ran today – it’s still Janathon and my schedule told me to run 3 miles with occasional intervals. Which I did! It took 32:33 so it was a reasonable pace for me, but I had to stop a couple of times for traffic, headphones not working and at one point runkeeper tried to take a photo and I couldn’t see how to turn off the camera. Weights tomorrow, then a 3 mile run on Friday in Llandudno, back to where I’d first resolved to go out running. Then I think I’ll have a beer.

Today the schedule demanded that I go for a four mile run “off road”. So I dutifully donned my running gear after a productive morning and headed down to Burscough. The canal towpath is a pleasant run and something that I haven’t done in months. In fact, I think I last did it when I was starting out and running 3-4k’s maximum.

The weather was bright and warm for this time of year – six degrees! So a t-shirt and some shorts was sufficient. In retrospect, I probably looked like a nutter because everyone else I saw was wrapped up with coats and scarves, but hey ho, I felt fine.

The run starts on a soft gravel section. I quickly discovered that this was ideal for large puddles to form and the grass around the path had reverted to a vast sea of mud. I picked my way through this as best I could, thinking that one false move could end up with me in the canal.

After about a mile the path thins out and becomes a hard mud rut from people walking along the canal. This was fine for about 300 yards. Then I hit a sea of mud that went for the rest of the run until I turned around. Ground churned up variously by bikes, motorbikes, horses, walkers (and possibly the odd person running). With every step I was getting more tired, slipping all over the place and generally concerned that I’d twist my ankle or something else.

This video should give you an idea of what I must have looked like:

I finally made it back to the car after a much slower run than anticipated. The puddles that had looked like vast lakes on the way out now looked like nothing and I was just running through any old water and mud just to get back. My legs felt knackered and overall I was shattered.

All in all, I was happy that I’d done the run and I can see why they had a shorter run off-road than I’ve been doing lately. It’s really very hard.

Tomorrow the schedule says weights. So it’s another NROL break-in workout. I’m very glad that I’ll be giving the legs a teeny tiny rest. Not much though, those squats and lunges can be a killer.

Only four more days until the end of Janathon. You never know, I might just get to the end.

So it’s been quite a mixed day – up early to get a presentation finished off that I was doing at 10am. Then more meetings and back home by 1.

I’d woken up full of energy and ready to face the day, but by 2pm I was knackered. I’ve tracked my sleep for two nights since thinking it might give an insight into patterns and perhaps things that I can improve on. Eight hours sleep over two nights – six hours proper sleep – shows that there’s some room for improvement. So a hearty half hour snooze and pottering finishing some bits before heading to the school for a briefing about a school trip to York.

The briefings are surely a waste of time for everyone in the room. It lasted about 20 minutes and could have been summarised on a letter. In fact, I suspect that we’ll have all that information in a letter by the end of the week. We’re expected to turn up at 3:30pm despite many of the parents having a job during the day. Normally the children would have been in after school club until about 5 / 5:30, but I took them both home at 4. So my late afternoon was torpedoed by something that could have been put in a letter.

Oh, I’m not bitter. Not at all.

Anyway, Monday is also Cubs and Brownies night. Joel had his cub scout investiture this evening, which in my eyes makes him really grown up. The Beavers is just a dim memory these days. Lily’s Brownies sounded like it was fun – she got to show some girls around who made their Brownie promise this evening. They both seemed to enjoy their time out.

All this meant that it was about 8pm when I was getting out for my run. A four mile easy run which I wasn’t really looking forward to. Mixed messages from Facebook when I wondered out loud whether just sitting in and watching the telly might be a better option for one evening. But I got the right encouragement from the right places and I headed out.

My route took me down the A59 in a Liverpool direction this evening – compared to the Burscough / Preston direction last night. I went towards Aughton, then cut along Long Lane, back down Prescot Road and returning the way I came via County Road.

I’ve been avoiding this run for the past year, when I realised that it was a neat route – because of the hill up from the fire station roundabout to Long Lane. It’s about 120 feet up in a fairly short space. I know that there are hillier bits, but it felt like it just kept going, and it’s something I’d been reluctant to tackle in the past.

So I was really pleased when I completed the run in 47:12. I’ve been trying to keep under 12 minutes per mile for and this came in at 11:48 minutes per mile. I know that for some this is super-slow, but this makes me very happy. The splits for the last two miles were 11:22 each, so I was pretty consistent getting back home.

So my desire to stay at home and watch the telly had to be put back to shortly after 9pm when we put on The Bridge. Which we like, a lot. I can’t blog or do anything of any use when it’s on because of the subtitles – which makes it great for winding down to; despite the fact that it’s all murder and intrigue.

We did the usual thing of having to watch the next episode after the first ended… just because the cliffhanger was brilliant. Another couple of weeks and it’ll be done and we can have our Monday nights back again.

It’s tempting to put a Kate Bush video here, instead here’s Placebo’s version: