Friday night's alright for running

Day:        19
Distance: 7.51 km
Time:       40:13 secs
Calories:  590

It's January and I'm off the booze. There are numerous reasons for this, including the month long liver torture that is December and a post-Christmas lack of cash. Other incentives this year are that I want to continue building on the start that I've made to my marathon training and, I have to admit, lose a few pounds.

This means that a typical Friday night at the moment consists of running a few kilometres rather than downing a few pints. No doubt, normal service will resume in due course but for the time being I'm actually enjoying the change in 'health behaviour'.

At this stage of training a 40 minute run shouldn't pose too many difficulties, but this run was a little different in that it called for 10 mins x 'steady', 20 mins x 'tempo' and 10 mins x 'steady'. By the wonders of Run Keeper I can tell you that I was averaging around 5:30-6 mins per kilometre for the two 'steady' sections, while for the 'tempo' sections of the run I averaged around 4:30-5 mins per kilometre.

The difference between my 'steady' and 'tempo' paces might not seem like all that much but running in this fashion certainly meant that at the end of the run I was shattered as I had covered the majority of the 7.5 km at 'tempo'. Normally, I get to the end of a run and feel like I could carry one but on this one I was very glad to return home.

It strikes me at this point that it has been a little while since I posted one of my running songs, so I shall do so now. But first, some background.

I hadn't thought of Sixties fetishists Ocean Colour Scene in many a year, but in the week before Christmas I was driving along listening to the radio when all of a sudden the DJ transported me back to the mid-90s with "100 Mile High City" by OCS. Ten seconds of an absolute belter of a guitar riff and the introduction of the drums was all I needed to know that this would be a most worthy addition to my running playlist. The video below isn't the best (I can't find the official video), but with a song this good that shouldn't matter. Enjoy.