London Pride

I was very proud of myself on Monday night, as I managed to run over 7 miles.

My usual distance is only 4 miles (or 4.26 according to MyFitnessPal, but I don't trust that!), and I chose that because I can do a warm-up, run that distance and then have a shower all within an hour, which makes it easy to plan for.

As I mentioned before, I'd been running my normal distance every night since Wednesday, so had already covered about 20 miles. I needed 6.2 more miles to score a marathon distance, and as I'd already achieved that in seven days before, I thought I'd try and do it in six days, and cover the whole distance in one day.

The thing is, I didn't know if I would be able to cover that distance, given that I'd never tried it before. So I only really planned to try for five miles. After the five I was able to keep on for another mile, and then threw in another to make sure I covered the distance I needed. The truth is, I could have carried on for a while longer, but it was getting late and I had an early start, so I decided I'd better end it there!

I was really pleased with this, for a number of reasons:

a) As I've mentioned, I covered a marathon distance in only six days this time - I just have to keep reducing that down, and eventually I'll be doing it in one day!

b) I covered a new personal best distance, and reckon I can do even more!

c) Seven miles is over 10km, which is the distance that some charity races etc are. I'd never thought I could run far enough to ever enter a proper race event, but now I know I can manage a 10km, I might start there, then move it up to half-marathons, and then hopefully one day a full marathon!

Those are all great, but the thing I'm most pleased about? I exceeded my own expectations. I was very comfortable with my four miles, and although any exercise is great, I wasn't really pushing myself, and I was in a bit of a rut. By actually pushing past that I realised I was capable of more, and with that came the realisation that I ought to PUSH myself more!

So, I think I'm going to up my regular distance to 5 miles from now on, and am definitely thinking about one day testing the FULL distance I'm capable of!