So Juneathon is now over and I’m delighted that I took part. The end of May saw me do nothing – and I mean nothing – from a fitness perspective and it was hard to motivate myself. I saw Juneathon as a way to provide that extra motivation and that proved to be the case. So here’s a bit of a summary of the month.
Firstly the numbers. Before I started I said that I wouldn’t be running every day (partly as I’d be swimming, but also because I’d have some rest days), but I set myself a target of 25 days of activity. And although I didn’t state it out loud, I wanted to do 100kms in the month.
– Days of activity – 23 (the last week saw me have a couple of unscheduled “rest” days)
– Running – 70.18kms
– Swimming – 17.3kms
– Cycling – 18.4kms
– Total – 110.91kms (I count swim distances as double, but cycling as 1/3 distance)
But of course Juneathon is about much more than just the numbers, so what have I learned over the month:
– I enjoyed the month – let’s face it, without Juneathon I wouldn’t have been able to see things such as this heron in
Hyde Park.
– I can run – I haven’t done much running at all over the last couple of years and when I did I got injured, but over the month I gradually increased the distances run (going as far as 7.7km) and now feel that I could train up to a half-marathon.
– I enjoy running – it’s funny that once it becomes a bit easier and I’m injury free I started to enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy every run, but I don’t think I had a single run that had nothing good to report from it – and I had plenty that I really enjoyed.
– I do have time – one of my excuses in the past is that I don’t have time, but with a bit of careful planning clearly I do. Also, now I’m enjoying it more I don’t need to spend as much time psyching myself up for it – I can just get changed, run, shower and then get back to my day.
– I do have the energy – another excuse is that I don’t have the energy after working hard. I’m sure I don’t work any harder than many people, but it does take it out of me and I don’t always fancy going out to run (or swim). What I’ve found this month is that the exercise is helping to give me extra energy and it’s when I don’t exercise that I don’t have the energy.
– I could do a triathlon – I’ve done a couple of triathlons in the distant past and I’d like to do more, but I’ve always been put off by the running, now that I’m confident I can 5km (enough for a sprint tri) easily enough I’ll enter some.
Now what I need to do is create my own “Julyathon” to keep the momentum going (yeah, right!)
1000kmstowindermere 