Today marks 1 year from the date I started running. Back in July 2011 I helped some friends move and they were looking at selling their treadmill rather than move it.  I was interested in purchasing it but not sure if I would actually use it. At the time I wasn’t really doing any exercise but had been thinking about doing something to get fit. I was still undetermined about buying it until they mentioned it hooked up to the internet and at that point I was sold. (As it turns out it doesn’t hook up to the internet as the company have moved on their fitness program to ifitplus instead of ifit.

After getting it home, I put it together and on July 30, 2011 I had my inaugural run.  This was probably the first run I had done since the dreaded cross country run at school which I hated – about 23 years previously. My notes on the first run read – “Inaugural run on the treadmill at 4.5mph. Felt good after it. Could have gone on for longer but I didn’t have water bottle or towel with me. ” I ran a total of 1mile at an average  pace of 13.5 minute mile.  Surprisingly I felt good about this run and looked into the Couch to 5k program as a means of getting myself a training plan that I could follow. August 8th I started on Week3 of the plan. It was tough – some days were really hard to complete although I think my treadmill’s 10min per mile pace is way faster than it is when running outside and although the c25k plan is really based on time spent running rather than the distance, they do include distances which averages out to a 10min pace (which I later discovered is pretty fast for a newbie runner)

Half way through the c25k I made plans to run a 5k in aid of a charity for a friend from work. The timing was perfect as it came about 2 weeks after the end of the plan. The race was pretty small and I came in 3rd in my age group which was a tremendous boost to my confidence.

September 29th I made my first appearance at the Turtle Thursdays group run – an awesome group of friends that meets at Whetstone Park of Roses. It was a very memorable event as I locked my keys in the car and everyone waited for me to be rescued which is a great icebreaker and a show of friendship. It was also my first 5mile run.

Unfortunately shortly afterwards, 11 days before Thanksgiving I was running with a friend  and felt good but my knees started to hurt after the run and I ended up going to see a specialist and found out I had torn my meniscus. Surgery was scheduled for 29th December and it wasn’t until Jan 15th 2012 that I did my first run – this time 50% longer than my first run and at a 10.5min pace.

The spring was spent training for the CapCity half marathon on May 5th that I finished in 2hrs, 18 minutes that I was really pleased with. It felt easier than I expected (although still tough) and made me wonder if I was able to run a marathon.

Now – 1 year later I’m now in week 5 of training for the Columbus Marathon in Oct. I’ve ran a training run of over 15 miles a couple of weeks ago, run several races and am looking forward to the “big one”. The number of miles that I have run this year varies depending on which application is used to look at the data but according to Runkeeper I’ve run 513 miles, my furthest distance is 15.4 miles, my best week was 32.1 miles and my best month was 82.6miles. All those miles took me 87 days, 12 hours and 5 minutes and I burnt 64,829 calories. For those of you in the States, thats the equivalent of running from Columbus to St Louis or for the UK, Lands End to Dumfries in Scotland – now quite up to John O’ Groats

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Unfortunately at this moment I’m having to rest as my left leg is hurting that makes running painful – I actually had to cut short my run and go back to crutches for the evening last Thursday which is obviously not good. However I’m hoping to complete 732 miles this year – 2 for each day. At the time of writing I’m exactly 400 miles in.