Running Round in Circles

As you may have guessed, I usually run in the gym and not outdoors; mainly because my house seems to be at the bottom of two pretty steep hills so to really get anywhere I need to run up these, but buy the time I get to the top I am shattered and want to magically appear at home again! I think I really need to get some hill training in. I was lucky with my last (and only) 5k as it was mainly flat with only a couple of very slightly gradual hills. Anywayyy.... I went out for my first outdoor run so far this year this morning and I really enjoyed it! After a bit of a stress about what to wear, its a lot milder today than it has been the last few days, I was off. I had planned a 3.5k route on MapMyRun previously and decided to do this. I had only planned to do 2k today but I was in the mood so it seemed quite pointless going out to just do 2k. I finally managed to get the GPS working on my iPod and was quite impressed with the app. It showed me where I was running, my time, my distance, my minutes per km and my current pace actually scratch that, a lovely lady TOLD me these wonderful stats! I ran slightly further than planned and ended up closer to 3.6k, I thought about running a bit further to round it up to 4k but I wasn't sure if I did the small loop by my house then it would go over the 4k mark and I'd just have to keep running in circles until it got to a round number, I would have been dizzy! I tweeted my workout and then felt bad for not having an even number so went for a quick jog around to block (500m) to make it up to 4k.

Unfortunately there are no pretty and frosty photos from my run today like others yesterday and Monday. The conditions were pretty dull, overcast sky's and damp, it must have rained in the night. It seemed pretty warm in comparison to previous days so for me and for running it was ok. The drains were damp and slippy and I nearly went flying a few times, oops, I need to watch where I'm running. Also, has anyone else noticed the amount of dog poo on the pavements? I was quite shocked, especially as every person I saw with a dog was picking it up! Might be because it is quite a residential area so no one really pays much attention. Enough talk about dog dodo....

I have planned tomorrow to go to a class called Key Toning, more like a toning class for abs and arms I think, mainly because I hate my arms and because I don't just want to get too bogged down with cardio and forget to tone my body. Hopefully it will be mainly toning and not too strenuous in cardio so I will then go into the gym and run. Planned is a 5k so I will do this and see how I feel, I may even do 6k! My planned Km's for this week is 20km. I didn't plan anything last week and I did 18 so I thought I'd slightly increase it each week. I only increased it by 2k as I didn't want to push my self too hard and thought (for me) 20km is quite a lot at the moment. I may break this target but we'll see!

With a 6.29 min/km pace I was quite pleased with this run. I have no idea what this means as the treadmill does nothing like this but I think this is faster than what I usually do on the treadmill. My idea is to do at least 1 outdoor run a week so I'll use this as a base and then try and get faster! I think its easier to keep going outside because when you're on the treadmill with people walking next to you its so easy to press to downward arrow on the speed and slow down for a little while.

I'll try take some more interesting pictures next time but for now, its time for a good nights sleep.
Love x