Well the beginning of the year has been a bit of a battle with the old motivation ! all the rain we’ve had doesn’t tempt me outside particularly. But in the last few days we’ve finally had the cold, frosty but sunny, clear sky days that I absolutely love.
The beginning of the year has been a bit overindulgent – without enough running to counteract it all. But now that Christmas and family birthday parties are out of the way, I feel that I need to get back to some kind of healthier eating. I do need to lose some weight that I’ve put on, but above all I need to eat ‘cleaner’ – this seems to be a buzz word recently, but I know that I feel far, far better if I eat very few processed foods and include plenty of fruit and veg with lean protein and some carbs (I really couldn’t do a no / low carb diet!!). I also need to drink less wine – which for me means saving it as a treat for the weekend, rather than a glass or two several times in the week. The first few weeks will be the hardest as I get back into the habit of reaching for a healthy snack, rather than biscuits and cake all the time.
It is just over 5 weeks till my first race of this year – the Dalton Dash 10k. Do I need to train specifically for this?
This is something that I’m slightly lost with now that I am a regularly runner. For my first 10k, of course I had to train for it – it was among the longest I was running at the time, so I knew it would be hard work.
But now, 10k is a distance I run on a fairly regular basis – so how do I train specifically for this. I know I can do the distance, so should I be focusing on tempo / interval training? I’m presuming that it depends on what I want to achieve. Is my goal to just complete, or do I want to complete it within a specific time? If I’m going for the time, then I definitely need to start some more speed training!
This last week saw me run 5 times – covering just under 25 miles. The best run of the week was yesterday’s 9 mile trail run. We had made the decision to avoid the roads due to the heavy frost and decided to head out to the Hudson Way – an old railway line which we joined at Beverley. The route was mostly hard, rough ground, interspersed with very, very muddy sections!! It was definitely a work out and I had to concentrate the whole time watching where my feet were going but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I did take more photo’s but they didn’t come out – not sure if my phone has a problem, or if it was just steaming up when I took it out of my belt……
We definitely want to do more trail running, so if anyone has any suggestions in East Yorkshire please let me know.
a mile run 
I loved this entry, I know the feeling all to well of trying to refind a hidden mojo. I am also eating clean/no sugar and drinking only at the weekend. I’ve been sugar free for a month now, it is hard only in the sense that you have to get used to reading all labels. The hardest thing has been giving up coffee and tea! I have only just started to stop wanting to kill everyone. Good luck, I have my first 10km race on the 31st. I am keen to know what training you apply to yours?? xx
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