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.

It's a glorious day in the south of the UK today. It's dry and sunny with a slight cool breeze blowing. I'd planned on going for a long run later today once the roads had warmed up a bit, but when I saw how gorgeous it was outside, I couldn't hold myself back and headed out a little earlier than planned.

What a fantastic run. I'd originally planned on only running about 8km, but before I knew it I'd already clocked up 6km and was about 4km from home. I could probably have carried on further, but given 8km was my previous longest barefoot run, I thought it best to head back home.

When I got home, I sync'd up my Garmin Forerunner 405CX (note to self, I really should write about my new toy some time) with Garmin Connect (leaves a lot to be desired, but it happens automatically) and my FetchEveryone account. Whilst checking my log on FetchEveryone I noticed I'd managed to tick off two of my goals this week:

• 20km per week in training completely barefoot
• 10km long training run

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