Category: Running

I’ve been meaning to post an update for some time: Despite it being the safe bet, I’m still training and somehow it’s going better than expected – My progress can still be followed over at RunKeeper.

I hit a major (for me) milestone last week, completing 5km without needing to stop/slow (and in a reasonable time, <35mins). As this was my original training goal back in 2012 I proud to have got there in the end, unfortunately it left me with five weeks training to double my distance if I’m to complete the race’ course in one piece. Feels like a tall order needing to add an extra km every week, but so-far It’s an increase I’m managing to stay ahead of.

As I’m now only 28 days from race day (providing opportunity for ~12 training runs) I’ve finally gotten around to setting up my Just-Giving page for anyone that able to help spur me forward and help out an excellent local charity, Teeside Philanthropic Foundation, in the process. Any donation, great or small, will be greatly received.

Thanks in advance, see you at the finish line.

Andrew Waite

A little over a year ago I wrote a post (over on my infosec-focused site) detailing my attempt to lose weight and get fitter. The drive at the time was to enable I was able to run around the park with my then just expected daughter: I’ve got zero interest in finding out how you tell your kids you can’t play in the park because “daddy prefers pizza”.

Unfortunately the reality of parenthood hit, my responsibilities increased and my training plan fell by the way-side. I’ve tried a couple of times this year to get back into the routine, but haven’t been able to keep my running schedule consistent enough to get back in the habit.

This week at work was our usual 6 monthly staff review meeting and aside from the usual facts, figures and motivational style pick-me-ups, our fearless leader announced  he would be running the Middlesbrough 10K run this year for the companies chosen charity (the rather excellent Middlesbrough & Teeside Philanthropic Foundation) – and that he was looking for 5 others to fill the vacant spaces allocated to work. In a moment of clarity/madness (*delete as appropriate after the event) I decided the end goal, target date and peer-pressure would be the perfect motivation to ensure I follow through and get training again, so I signed up.

Before making the decision I’d review some of my recent activity and realised that at worse case I can walk 10K in 2 hours, so I’ve set myself a provisional target of completing the course in 1hr30mins. Far from race winning pace, but what can you expect from an over-weight geek?

This evening I completed my first training run, which was a little over 4km in ~35minutes. Not exactly 10K, but better than I was expecting to achieve at first attempt, and not a bad starting point. Future training sessions should all be recorded by RunKeeper, if anyone is interested enough to track my progress, or if anyone of my fellow ‘volunteers’ want to compare training and progress, you should be able to follow me at RunKeeper.

Wish me luck…..
— Andrew