Running

I've been running regularly for almost 5 years now and mainly enjoy cross country and trail races, though I do a few road ones for PBs.

My first taste of running was at junior school, I was in the cross country after school club, which took place once a week. Quite often we had a race around the rec at the end and I usually found myself in the top few. I've wondered how fast I could have been then with a bit more training but at the time I didn't think any extra running would make much difference.

It wasn't until a decade later in the summer of 2011, I picked running up again. To start, I did a few runs on my own to build up a little bit of fitness, though was a lot slower than expected. I was thinking low 20s for a 5k would be easy and timed a few runs, but it turned out I couldn't even break 26 minutes no matter how hard I pushed. In the same year I joined the athletics club at Cardiff Uni and went running with them several times, though often found it quite hard to hang on to the slow group (8-9 minute mile pace). Initially the my times were creeping up, even on a single run a week, but the gains soon leveled off.

A year later after University, I joined local club, the Romsey Road Runners, with the aim of doing more running. At this time I also started participating in a local league of races, the RR10s. Unfortunately I fractured a bone in my foot, nevertheless still managed to complete three RR10's which I really enjoyed (even though my Mum beat me in one of them). Eventually however my foot got to the point where I could barely walk on it and knew I had to take some time off running.

2013 was a much better year, even though injuries were on and off, I was finally managing to run a few times a week, which really lifted the fitness and I was able to start running a bit faster!

I got a GPS watch in 2014 and started using Strava to record my runs. Since then I've found it good way to keep track of weekly mileage.

This year my major target is breaking the hour for 10miles.

 

My SB/PBs:

Race Results

Here's my results from a few races including the RR10s and CC6s league.