One February Friday

Day:         54

Distance: 6.76km

Time:       39.37secs

Calories:  563

It's another early start and one that isn't helped by the fact that the last song I hear while getting my running gear together is "Shoot the runner" by Kasabian. Thanks for those words of encouragement XFM.

Putting worries about the possibly prophetic nature of the song to one side I head out and find that my legs are feeling the effects of yesterday's fartlek outing. This just gets better.

On the plus side, I do have company today as Jim joins me for a pre-work run. He's now just 3 weeks away from the Silverstone Half Marathon and he already has designs on the St Albans Half Marathon later in the year - I think this underlines the addictive nature of running. Jim started running 10k events a few years back and his experience (along with other friends) inspired me to give it a go for myself, since running my first 10k in November 2008 I've been hooked and haven't looked back.

As ever, I digress.

Once we set off my legs stop protesting and we tackle this 7km route at a fairly easy pace (averaging 5:51 mins/km across the 40 minutes). Although the training plan recommends "45 mins steady" I'm quite happy to run at this pace as I've still got another run to do on Sunday and at 26km or so I want to be in a fit state for that.

Assuming all goes to plan, the run on Sunday will take me to five runs this week, which I'm really pleased about. I only managed to fit three in last week and, as a result, felt like I wasn't doing enough so it's good to be hitting the target set by the training plan again this week. I was always a little concerned about how to fit the running around work and a social life but the fact that I was in the mosh pit at Funeral Party's gig at Cargo last night and still got up for a 6.30am run suggests that it is doable.
 

Funeral Party's energetic stage show in full, irresistible flow. I was down the front. Should have thanked them for providing one of the standout tracks on my running playlist ("NYC moves to the sound of LA")