My new 30 day challenge has already helped my running... it's given me the motivation to actually starting doing long runs on the weekends again. Today I headed out for my first weekend long run in a very very long time and I really enjoyed it.

I didn't push things too hard and just aimed for 15km or 75mins, whichever came first, over as much offroad terrain as I could (I wore the Merrell Trail Gloves). In the end it was the 15km mark that came first, but only by about 2 mins. I kept things at a pretty consistent pace (around 4:47/km) and it was only the last 4 up hill kilometers that I really slowed down.

It was really enjoyable and great to be back out on the roads early on a Sunday morning when no one is around, though that said I was quite surprised at the number of families already taking a stroll around the local lakes and ponds.

I'll definitely be looking forward to next weekend's long run.

Oh yes, and this long run completes what has ended up being a bumper week in the mileage front: 58km in total this week which is pretty high considering I also had a 10k race on Wednesday. Today's run also ticks off one of my goals - a 15km long run. Lets see if this can become a habit.

Over on my personal site I've just written about Matt Cutt's brilliant idea of doing or not doing something for 30 days straight. Given today is the first of the month so as good a time as any, I'd decided I'm going to do my own little challenges.

I'm starting with something easy...

I'm going to run at least 3km everyday for 30 days

Now as I mentioned in my post, this shouldn't be too hard to achieve on Monday to Friday, but the weekends may prove a bit tough. As it's only 3km, I should be able to easily squeeze in a run.

As with all my training, I'll be logging everything in my training diary on Fetcheveryone.com.

I'm quite excited about this challenge, not just for the challenge of doing something new, but to see what kind of impact this will have on my running.

11 days ago I ran the third of three of the Queen Mother Reservoir 10k races in the series. This was my first and probably last running of this race.

The 10k race is a very very flat two lap race around the top of the Queen Mother Reservoir on trail/gravel path and grass with a small section of tar as you pass the clubhouse to start your second lap.

Things started well for this run. I'd had a good day at work and was in a good mood, full of energy and I felt I had a new personal best (since returning) in me that night. I headed off to the race with plenty of time, but after a few judgement errors in my attempts to avoid traffic I ended up cutting things a bit fine and arrived at the Datchet Water Sailing club with only 10 minutes to spare. Thankfully I was already changed so with my adrenaline levels high, I grabbed my cash and dashed up to the club house, nearly puked as I entered the clubhouse which was really hot and reeked of old chip fat (I'm not a fan of the smell of old grease), paid my entrance fee and headed outside for my hurried warm up.

At 19:30 promptly the 10k runners were sent on their way. Earlier that evening there had been a mighty downpour which left the grass and path very wet with a lot of puddles. It was also quite humid. I started well and soon got into a comfortable pace around about 3:55/km running on the grass alongside the path. I found the gravel path a bit more slippery than the grass. Anyway, I was chugging along nicely and then something happened... I got bored. I lost all motivation to actually push for a fast time and started to wonder if it would have been wiser to run just the 5k.

I think the thing that got to me was this is really a bit of a boring race. It's two identical flat laps with very little in the way of scenery other than the view of Windsor Castle which you could only see from one corner and the undersides of aeroplanes coming and going from Heathrow. There wasn't much in the way of spectators either with sheep being the primary spectators around the course and a few people at the 5k/finish line. There also weren't that many runners in the 10k so company was quite scarce. I was so bored that I worked out that the people who would fill the top 20 places were determined within the first 2km (I was one of them).

Despite my boredom and loss of motivation, I still finished in 16th place (out of 141) in a time of 40:43.

Other than that, a well organised and friendly race, though the smell of grease and then sewerage as you passed the club house wasn't very nice at all.

Don't let my comments put you off this race, this race is probably perfect for those who like nice flat lapped courses. I don't. I've never been a big fan of lapped races and this run confirmed why I don't particularly like them.

I don't think I'll run this race again.

For all those jumping on the Google+ bandwagon, I am now one of them and I am now on Google+. I'm interested in setting up a running circle and maybe a minimalist/barefoot circle, so if you're interested add me to one of your circles and I'll add you to mine.

I've been following and instilling the 10% rule for years for people starting out, especially when it comes to barefoot running, but I've always stated that this shouldn't be treated as a hard-and-fast rule. Looks like research is on the way to confirm that this doesn't really make much difference toward preventing injury. I think it should still be followed when starting barefoot running: not for injury prevention, but to acclimatise your feet to the new sensations.

On Sunday 22 May 2011, I ran the Stoke Row 10k for the first time. It's a relatively close race to home, but the thing that sold it for me was free music festival in the pub gardens afterwards. I thought this would be a great opportunity for my wife to have something to do whilst I run around the 'burbs and it would also make the run a bit of a "grand day out", which it proved to be, but we'll get onto the day's entertainment in a moment. First the race.

First, the race description...

The 10k route will start and finish at The Cherry Tree Inn, Stoke Row, taking you through some beautiful undulating Oxfordshire Countryside. Starting at 10.30 am, you will be chip timed, have water stops, plenty of clear route signage and marshalls.

This is pertinent as "undulating" is probably a little tame, but "hilly" is a bit too severe. This is quite a tough run as the elevation graph from my Garmin shows...

As you can see, there's quite a bit of climbing involved. It is also mostly offroad which the race description doesn't mention. It would have been good to know this in advance as I would have liked to have tackled it in my Merrells.

The race starts on the grass outside the pub and funnels everyone across the finish line (probably so the computer can register the chip starting the race). At the moment it's still a small race so there's plenty of space for the runners, but I think this race may increase in popularity which means they'll probably have to rethink the funnel start - possibly extend the funneling a bit.

The grassy start is only about 50m before you break out onto the road and start heading downhill, and quite quickly too. Before you know it, you're diverted off the road onto a wooded trail and you drop about 35m in altitude to reach the lowest point in the race just after 1km. And then you start climbing... for about 3.5km. There's a little table top as you cross a farmers field and then a slight dip, but nothing worth getting too excited about as you're soon climbing again.

Thankfully, things ease off a bit from about 5km, where the one and only water station is. After you've freshened up, you've got a good little downhill to get your legs going again and then it's moderately flat with a slight downhill feel for the next 2 and a bit kilometers. This is mostly along a shaded twin trail path alongside farmland with some lovely views. This twin trail can be a bit challenging as you'll definitely be thinking "I'm sure the other path is smoother than this one?". You'll switch and then start thinking the same thing about the path you've just come from.

After this, you wind you way along some tarred road for a bit before dipping back into the cover of the woods for a nice fast short downhill stint. This is a very cunning ploy as it gets you all excited before making you climb the steepest and toughest of all the hills in the race. And to make matters worse, this steep hill is all off road on a very uneven path. Once you pop out at the top of the hill, you need to muster all your energy to keep you going up the final tarred incline to the finish. Unfortunately, it was at the point of popping out of the woods that we could have done with a marshal as your natural tendency was to turn right, which several people did, including the first lady. I nearly did, but noticed another marshal further up the hill to the left so headed that way, and called back the guy who'd turned right ahead of me.

Being a good sport I also let him pass me again back to the finish as he would have finished ahead of me had he not gone wrong.

The finish is then back on the grass outside the pub where you started. Once crossing the line, you're handed a goody back, which this year included a coffee mug and a homemade flapjack which was very tasty, though no where near big enough for my tastes .

Several people have commented that the course was too long. My Garmin recorded the distance at 10.4km and whilst I agree it may have been slightly over 10k, I don't think it was too much. I can't trust my Garmin too much given the amount of time spent running under quite dense wood.

The official results for the race put me in 15th place out of 272 finishers with a race and chip time of 43:43.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much in the way of entertainment during the race, so my wife and her parents had to keep themselves busy eating bacon sarnies and drinking tea and coffee, but from midday things started to get more entertaining. The pub set up a limited bar outside and ran the usual bar inside. Unfortunately, they're limited by the single till inside so the two queues for the main pub bar were out the door all day. Normal pub food was on offer from the main bar and burgers and other BBQ stuff from the outside bar. We went prepared with a picnic so only needed drinks.

As we were there from the race, we managed to nab ourselves one of the double deck chairs (what a brilliant idea) that had been set out, laid down our picnic blanket in front of it and made ourselves comfortable for the entertainment, which included, to quote the website...

Carol Decker, The Lynne Butler Band, The Joint is Jumping, Kith and Kin, Bleak Angel, The International Ukulele Club of Sonning Common, The Cotton Dons, The McRobbies, Better Than Life.

We didn't see everyone as we only stayed for the most famous person, Carol Decker, who happens to be the wife of the pub landlord, who came on late in the afternoon. Once she'd done her bit, we headed off home.

All in all a very enjoyable, scenic and challenging race with great post-race entertainment making this a good day out. The only downside for the whole day was the cold wind that kept punctuating the afternoon whilst we were enjoying the music and the long queues to get drinks from the inside bar.

Well, we find ourselves in the middle of 2011, not quite slap bang in the middle, but near enough for me to provide a mid-year update.

Training

So far my training programme has suited me well, though I will be making a slight change. Since the beginning of December last year, I've been working on the following schedule:

• Monday: run - usually a hard session
• Tuesday: swim - usually about 2.5km
• Wednesday: run - varies between easy and hard, depending how I feel
• Thursday: full body weights session
• Friday: run - usually a longish tempo run
• Saturday and Sunday: either race or rest

All training has been almost exclusively barefoot and when it hasn't been, as with all racing, it has been in either my Vibram Fivefinger Bikilas (road) or Merrell Trail Gloves (off-road).

Now we're in race season, this format has changed slightly, only in as much as weights sessions are dropped before weekend races and after Wednesday races. For the rest of the year, I'm going to switch the swim and the weights sessions around, unless I'm racing on the Wednesday in which case I won't do a weights session. I'm also going to start adding in at least one more run, probably on the weekend, to try and up my mileage a bit.

Mileage

Talking of mileage (or should I call it "kilometerage" as I do everything in metric?), last night saw me click over the 500km mark in training and racing this year. I've been quite good at recording my training and racing, but realised I've not been tracking my warmups and cooldowns for races, each of which is easily 2 - 3km each, whilst I have been for training. I'm going start recording these now too.

If all goes well, I should tip over the 1000km mark by the end of the year. Nothing in comparison to what a marathon runner may clock up, but certainly a long way for someone who runs mostly barefoot, is concentrating on speed and who only clocked up 668km last year.

Racing

Now with all this training and some pretty good mileage, how has the actual racing been going? Well, actually very well. Here are my results so far this year:

I didn't expect to get back below 40 mins for 10k this season but so far I've managed it twice and once so far on the Yateley 10k which is considered a bit of a harder run. If I'd thought I was capable and aiming for it, I think I could have dipped below 40 mins for my first 10k too. That will definitely be on the cards for next year.

I've got a couple more interesting and fast races scheduled for the rest of the year so hopefully I can get a few more sub-40 10k's and hopefully that sub-19 5k. I'd love a sub-18 5k this year, but I think that's pushing it a bit. I had originally planned a sub-18 5k this year, but now I'm in full swing, I've come to realise this is a bit of an unrealistic goal for this year.

Rest

So as you can see, so far so good. However if I want to keep this up I need to rest, and it's time for a rest. I haven't had a rest since the week starting 14 March when my wife and I had a lovely week long break in the Lake District so I'm taking the next week off to give my body a chance to recover. The intention is to do absolutely no exercise at all, bar cycling to and from work. If I get the urge, I may do some exercise which is not running or commuting, so either a swim, indoor rowing or possibly a weights session, just no running.

Oh yes, and Tuesday this week saw me tick off another goal I've had on my 2011 list, but haven't actively been gunning for: I've dipped below 80kg in weight for the first time in years. I'm not a svelte 78.8kg. Down over 20kg since 29 Jan 2010 and down 5kg since January this year. And best of all, I haven't been on any specific diet. Exercise alone and my usual healthy diet has done it all.

All in all, the first half of this year has gone well on the running front and hopefully the second half will be just as good, if not better.

A couple of weeks ago I commented on Twitter (which published to Facebook) that I'd be gunning for a new 10k "personal best since returning" (PBSR) to running in the Shinfield 10k. My cousin "Liked" this and then followed up the next day asking how it went as this excerpt from Facebook shows:

My cousin has a fair point there, I shouldn't really be resetting my PBs, however my response did get me thinking... maybe I should dig out those old floppies and see if I can extract the data from the old application, Gotorun, to see what I could find.

Well, thankfully I DO still have an old laptop with a floppy drive. It wasn't long before I had all the data off the floppies and stored in image files for manipulation later. The next day I set to hacking my way through the database files to see if I could work out what database was used and then export the contents to CSV. It didn't take long and thanks to the Linux and open source community, I had my data exported from the proprietary database to CSV and imported into an OpenOffice spreadsheet. A little more tinkering and I'd extracted all my races into tabs by distance so I could easily see how I'd done all those years ago.

With this data at hand I made quite a few interesting observations:

1. I seemed to have suffered a major data loss at some point as I know I'm missing entries and a lot of the early entries had the comment "Re-entry after data loss" for their "Notes".
2. It was around about March 1998 that I started getting quite good at documenting my training and racing. Prior to that I didn't record much, though I suspect this may be due to not having discovered Gotorun at that stage or, as I mentioned above, I'd had some sort of data loss.
3. I WALKED a half marathon with my girlfriend at the time and "Vowed never to walk a half marathon again." This made me smile. I still stick to this rule.
4. I was quite a quick boy with the following PBs:
   
   
   • 5km: 18:35 on 26 Jan '99 - I seem to only have one 5k on record and it's one of my last runs in SA.
   • 8km: 29:09 (X-Country) on 2 May '98 and 30:49 (Road) on 17 Nov '98
   • 10km: 36:52 on 31 Dec '98 - Yes, I raced a nite race on new year's eve.
   • 15km: 59:29 on 10 Jan '99
   • 21.1km: 1:26:31 on 20 Apr '98
   • 32km: 2:36:56 on 23 Nov '97 - I know for a fact I ran this race in '98 too, but this entry seems to be missing.
   • 42.2km: 4:11:13 on 22 Feb '98 - My one and only marathon, used to qualify for the Two Ocean's Ultra marathon below. Terrible time due to inexperience and getting caught out by a 2-lap course.
   • 56km: 4:48:24 on 11 Apr '98
   Interestingly, I did record a quicker 10k time of 35:37 on 30 Jun '98 but commented "Short Course" in my logs so I'm discarding that quicker time. I also recorded a quicker 8k time of 20:24 which I also determined to be a very short course.

All but my marathon times are really good and certainly provide some big challenges for me if I'm going to get back to that level before I get too old.

For those that are curious, you can take a look at the spreadsheet via Google Docs here.

On Sunday 15 May 2011 I ran what I think I should start to call my local 10k race - the Woodley 10k. As with the Shinfield 10k race, this is also a fast and relatively flat race and I thought I may just be able to get the sub-40min 10k I just missed at Shinfield.

Following a request from a colleague, this and hopefully my future "first time" race reports, will be a bit more in depth.

Given Woodley is so close to home, and the fact that parking is limited to pretty much whatever Woodley town centre has, my wife and I cycled to the race. Bike racks are very limited too, but nothing a long chain and a firm fence post or tree couldn't solve.

The Woodley 10k starts and finishes at the town end of Memorial Recreation Ground on Headley Road in Woodley. When we got there the kiddies' 3k race was still underway and in it's final stages and quite a large crowd of runners and supporters building up around the start/finish area. For those concerned about these sort of things, there were plenty loos on offer: about 8 port-a-loos as well as those in the buildings at the recreation ground, and a fitness instructor gave a little aerobics type warm up routine just before the race started.

The start was effectively a very wide mass congregation behind a line drawn on the grass. There's nothing to really restrict you behind the start line, but once you cross it, you're funneled down from a width of about a football pitch to the width of a 2 lane road in about 200m thanks to orange mesh fencing on either side. This is definitely long enough and I didn't notice any severe bunching, though I did find myself up near the front so I have no idea what it was like further back in the field.

Once off the field, it's a bit of a sharp turn into the rec ground drive, across two speed bumps and then out onto the road. I can imagine this initial bit being a little tough with a large crowd. Once on the road, it's quite flat for about the first 2.5km as you make your way through the quiet neighbourhood roads and then you get your first climb as you head up towards Bath Road. Nothing major, but noticeable enough to drop my pace below 4:00/km for the first time.

Once you reach Bath Road, you run a short section on the pavement and then turn back in towards Earley to the first water station. It's then pretty flat and fast for the next 2km until you reach Wokingham road where you will find yourself at the highest point in the race looking as a great big long downhill towards the Showcase roundabout. According to my Garmin, we dropped about 25m in altitude over about 2.2km. This is a great downhill to the lowest point in the race with the only thing slowing you down being the water station as you pass Station Road at about the 6km mark. It's then a slow and continual climb back up the hill back towards Woodley with another water station at about the 8km mark.

This hill is quite a toughie and took quite a chunk out of my time. Thankfully I'd built up quite a "cushion" in the preceding kilometres so by the time I turned back into the recreation ground road, I was still on course for a sub-40 min 10k.

The race then finishes back on the field you started on, but a little to the side of the starting straight with a little climb to give you a final burn on your legs as you sprint to the cross the line. Well, it burnt my legs as I had someone breathing down my neck for most of the long hill. He passed me just as we entered the rec grounds, but I dug in deep and sprinted away from him on the grass to finish the race in a new "PBSR" (personal best since return) of 39:42. Yes folks, I'd just dipped below 40 mins for the first time in well over 12 years and I felt great. Knackered, but absolutely delighted with myself.

As the race is chip timed, the official results were available pretty quickly and were printed and stuck to the window of one of the buildings as they became available. Just before leaving, I popped over to confirm my time and position. I couldn't believe it, I was on the first page of results in 23rd place (out of 596 runners).

As a well earned reward, my wife and I then cycled down to our favourite pub, The Wheelright Arms, and have a big Sunday roast and a couple of beers for lunch. All in all this was a great race and a great day out.

I've just received this newletter from Terra Plana in which they announced these rather strange looking "fully moulded performance sandals"...

I'm intrigued. I'm not sure I like them yet or not. I certainly don't like most of the colours other than the grey and possibly the white ones. I think I might need to see them in the flesh.

Me thinks these are potentially the first foray into the world of huaraches by a proper shoe manufacturer, though way more engineered and accordingly may more expensive.