Sunday 30 March 2014

One Down, Forty-Nine to go - 5x50 Begins

Today was my first 5x50 day. The Shetland weather was kind to me bringing a glorious spring day with bright sunshine and no gales.  I had completed Week 8 of my 'Couch to 5K' and Week 9 was to run for 30 minutes, so I decided to jump full force into my 5K as I was feeling ready - or as ready as possible. It was my first full Sandwick route this year; the Sandwick route is the harder of my two routes as it has a slight hill. I say 'slight' as  if you are driving or walking you don't notice it, but running up it gets you right in the calves. I think that Day 1 is both the hardest and the easiest. It's difficult because it is the point of no return, and is also a long way from the end, but on the other hand it is exciting to start a new challenge and the ache from lots of consecutive runs has not set in.

The jog itself was good, the hill section hurt but I found about a minute in my last stretch where everything came together and I felt like I was running without thinking about it, and it felt faster than normal. I have no idea how to recreate this feeling tomorrow but it gives me some hope that my legs can move faster. I am not comparing my times with the end of last years challenge as I am not yet back up to that standard of jogging, but I will be comparing my times to the equivalent day last year. Today's time was 36.08, so still a 12 minute mile, however looking back at last year it was 40 minutes the first day. With a good head start on last year I am hoping to get a few personal bests this time.

With a sunny beach walk in the afternoon I added a 3.3K walk to my tally. They have changed the website for logging this year and I like the extra information given but it is still easy to fill out the activities. The bonus of starting on the day the clocks change to BST is that I found the time to jog, and log... and indeed blog on a day with only 23 hours so the rest will be easy - right?!?

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