On becoming a runner

This is part of a challenge to myself to start writing 500 words every day… this is day 11. The idea for today’s post is to write about the slaying of a dragon…

Once upon a time I used to be quite fit, not super fit but quite fit. At school when I used to row, before I started smoking I even enjoyed things like running!

Afterwards I went to a military training college. I was already fat,but by the end of the course, despite being a fairly heavy smoker I had begun to get quite fit…

I chose not to join the army and so real life intervened. Any fitness I had soon went and despite several attempts over the years to stop smoking I kept getting fatter….and fatter…. and fatter!

And then I found myself in March or so of 2013 skiing and half way down a slope I was so out of breath I had to take a break!

And it finally hit home to me quite how unfit I actually was… I had however still managed to persuade myself I wasn’t really that fat… although my brother did say something to me that made me think I was perhaps fatter than I thought I was!

Anyway after that it took some time, but eventually at the beginning of September, just over a year ago I decided enough was enough… and I started a running training program called Couch to 5K.

When I started I was practically chain smoking at approximately 50 cigarettes a day, and I weighed over 18 stone or 253 lbs.

The first day of my couch to 5K I managed to cover a distance of 1.28 miles at an average pace of 14.24 minutes/mile…. and the fastest I managed to go was 1/10th of a mile in 10.31 min/mile and I thought that was pretty good!

I managed 5 days of this training before I successfully injured myself and so started again about 6 weeks later in October.

Shortly after this I had come back from a run, went to the shop bought some cigarettes and got into the shower and started smoking! I suddenly thought to myself what the hell am I doing… and stopped smoking that cigarette and haven’t smoked since. It amazes me thinking back on it how easy it actually was!

Anyway I completed the C25K on the 6th December with an average pace of 11.13 min/mile for a run of 5KM.

Since then I have done a 5K to 10K training program, an improve your 10K training program and a half marathon training program.

Now a year later I am running 5 days a week, generally running sub 10 minute miles, although I recently did a 10K run where every mile was run under 9 minute miles. I am now training for a marathon and am hoping to do it in under 4 hours.

And I am coming up to the one year anniversary of stopping smoking!

Below is a recent before and after photo…

I still have a way to go with my fitness, but Couch to 5K started it all off for me, and I am forever grateful… I suspect it has quite possibly added 7 years + to my life.