Running

that's awesome smallfurry. i consider myself a passable distance swimmer and i still only squeak into the top 10% in my age group nationally. winning your age group is HUGE no? congrats dude.

i had my best run evah last night. i think i finally get it. i was actually enjoying it and ran 50% further than i've been before without stopping at a pretty steady pace over a very pleasant 7.5k round south london. sure i'll be over the magic 10k within a week. i'm a runner! wooHOO!

for the record things that have helped me up my game in the last couple of weeks are;

• no music. i don't get on with music when running. i find it either affects my pace too much (I need to be setting the pace, not whatever tune happens to be on) irritates me if it's not the right thing or i get annoyed at the less than perfect sound quality as my headphones get bounced out by the sweat and motion. plus i find myself using track lengths to figre out how long i've been running which tends to make it feel longer than has been. maybe i'll come back to it when i'm feeling a bit more secure in my abilities, but for now i feel much happier with my own thoughts and the sound of my breath.

• nothing in my hand and no GPS device. i'm happier carrying as little as possible. i find that not constantly waiting for the nike+ lady to say "four... kilometres... current pace... five minutes" or whatever, quite liberating. it stops me from concentrating on distance and my disappointing pace and lets me just enjoy what i'm doing.

• changing up my route. just getting lost and taking random turns is more interesting and seems to make the miles fly. just doing the same loop round the river got boring as it's almost all straight and as you can see your destination for almost the whole lap so it seems longer.

seems to be working for me anyway.

Cheers.

Kudos on the sans music running. If it helps, I read a big peice by some shrink on the mental benefits of running, being somewhat lost by listening to music. I never run events with music on, seems rude to me. But I do train with it. The heavy metal seems to get the juices flowing quicker.

I'm very dependant on aggressive music in the winter, as I need to turn on my aggression. To enjoy the bad weather. But then in the winter I carry all sorts of gear anyway.

In the summer its nice to take a minimalist approach.