I’ve had a lazy couple of days.  I intended to go for a run yesterday but convinced myself otherwise during the course of the day.  Today I went out on impulse; snap decisions seem to be the way I work where fitness is concerned.  Perhaps my decision was also motivated by the guilt I felt following last night too.

Last night I went out for tea with good friends to a local carvery.  The setup wasn’t conducive to sensible portion sizes either – a chef slices the meat up for you but you’re left to get as many potatoes, veggies and sauces as you can fit onto your plate.  You can go back for more, too.  And I did.

After all that eating – there was dessert too – I didn’t expect today’s run to be anything special.  Setting off, I kidded myself, as I often do, into thinking I’d only do 3 or 4 miles before heading back home for lunch.  I’m loving going for runs in my Nike Pro Combat top which is really warm to run in when it’s cold and windy as it was today.  The extra protection against the elements helped my resolve, first of all to be out there but also to stay out there and put a good number of miles in.

I’ve also made a couple of changes to the way my Garmin records my split times as I’m going along.  I’ve reduced the distance of the splits to half-miles, increasing the number of opportunities that I have to monitor my pace.  It works a treat.  I’ve also changed the pace field to average pace so I can monitor how I’m doing overall which also helps me calculate how hard I have to run from any given point to the finish in order to finish in x number of minutes.

My average pace varied but stayed comfortably sub-9 minute mile throughout, I finished 10k in 53:15.  It’s fair to say that I never envisaged getting a PB until I uploaded the data to Garmin which informed me that it was the quickest I’d ever covered that distance.

As Scott Jurek once said:  Sometimes, you just do things.

I’m not satisfied with 53:15, I feel like I ought to break the 50 minute barrier this year on a flat course but only if I put the training in.  I also need to improve my diet but that’s another post entirely!

Until next time!

Do you have a particular fitness target this year?  Share it in the comments!