2010 was a year of improving, in almost every race I entered I beat previous personal bests and on the whole I have become fitter, faster and lighter. I have had lots of highs and thinking about it now only one real low. I have taken my running to new levels and running has now become such a huge part of my life.

If I ran a lot in 2008-2009 it was nothing in comparison to 2010. Over the course of the year I have entered:
- Two 10kms (Newham, Bluewater*)
- One 10m (Stockport*)
- Four half marathons (Roding Valley, Silverstone*, Dartford, Royal Parks)
- One 24hr relay event
- Two Marathons ( London DNF, Dublin*)
( *denotes Race Personal Bests)

Over the year I have run at least 1100 miles. After a bit of google’ing this is equivalent from running between London and Gibraltar! Most, but not all, of those miles were covered in London. However, I did run whilst on holiday in Spain, attempted to run on a treadmill whilst skiing in Andora and even went out with a Running Club at 6am whilst in Fort Lauderdale. In May I joined Serpentine RC and through good fortune I managed to bump into Rich and Jim on my first night and since then Rich has joined me on a number of races including dragging me around the Dublin Marathon! Cheers Rich…

I have also managed to get an article in Runners World magazine about this blog and have been contacted by a number of people who have somehow stumbled into my little home on the web. I think this is pretty cool – the subject matter is pretty dull to most, I’m no record breaker and I say it like it is however I still get visitors and I hope this will continue on into 2011.

At the beginning of 2010 I was an 8:30-9 min/mi runner, an 8min/mi was a tough session – however, on the final race of the year I managed 10 hilly miles with an average pace of 7:25, substantially faster! Luckily I think I still have more to give, a more focused schedule in 2011 structured in a way to build my speed should hopefully see me setting more PB’s.

At the moment I am still unconfirmed of my race plans for 2011, it’s possible I will head back to Silverstone again and take on the 1:42:44. I have entered the Dorney Lakes Half and it’s also likely I will run a Marathon in the spring and, depending on how that goes, also in the Autumn. Hopefully, if Rich doesn’t continue to get quicker and quicker maybe we will head abroad somewhere for the Autumn one, possibly Berlin…?!

Bring on 2011…!

N

That’s right 3 years after setting this blog up, 163 posts later I have finally made it big time! I feature in Runners World magazine and not just a little link to an article – it’s a fully fledged editorial piece explaining how things like blogs and technology are influencing runners.

I have never pertained to think my traffic was exceptionally high, compared to where I develop during the day the amount of traffic this site gets is pitiful.  But I’m aware the appeal of my site is small, after all who would want to read the poorly spelt and punctuated musings of a 20 something going on about running…?

My story is not unique. I’m not running across the world whilst juggling hamsters for charity nor am I competing for England (or likely to be any time soon). I’m just another guy with a love for running that happens to be kinda skillful with technology. I have owned a website for years I have just never stuck at anything long enough to consider writing about. I hoped one day it would be my CV, prospective employers could look at it and I could host any of my visions on it.

At the start of 2009 it went through a redesign, it was to be my hub for raising funds for the London Marathon. I blogged about my training experiences all the while crossing new running boundaries (see from the link how excited I was to run 15/16miles!) that all virgin marathon runners experience. For me it was good to write and it seemed some read it – even if it was just close friends and family!

It wasn’t really until the the summer of ’09, when I had a break from running after the Marathon, I realised that my running was causing me to lose weight - so I blogged about it . At that point I was unaware of the whirlwind that was to follow…

I will have a longer synopsis of 2010 once I have completed my last race of the yer in Stockport, but if I thought my running in ’09 broke boundaries then ’10 smashed them. My blog let people follow my many ups and didn’t shy away from my downs. Following the disaster that was the London Marathon in April I could have easily given up running and blogging for good. For all those who were watching to see how I had done it pained and embarrassed me to write about my failure. But I did and fortunately I held onto my trainers, held my head up and looked towards my next challenge. Six months later I crossed the finish line of the Dublin Marathon smashing my personal best, the 4 hour barrier and most importantly  exercising my demons. It was on this blog that I could share my joy and happiness!

The blog is a diary, something I write on my phone as I head home from work. It acts as a time line and a reminder for the future.

If you happened to have stopped by here because of the Runners World feature (hello!) please say hi below, follow me on twitter or contact me by clicking the link at the top. If you want any advice on setting your own blog up send me a message I want to hear from you!

420 miles covered, gallons of energy drinks consumed and several energy gels swallowed all in order to train for the one of the biggest marathons in the world.

This post maybe better suited following the run but I think the huge amount of training that I have done is easily lost in the glory (or not!) of the big day itself. Therefore, after 16 weeks of training unlike anything I have ever done before, and yes I did run the marathon last year, I am going to share my ups and downs since January 1 2010.

I was fortunate to get a place in this years marathon around September time, for the months leading up to the new year I knew I ought to go out for a run but I didn’t. Luckily, I still hadn’t lost fitness and on an initial ‘tester’ run I managed a half marathon distance, it was tough but a good footing for the months to come. At the beginning of the year I had an email from Runners World stating 16 weeks to go, so I decided this year I would take a schedule and stick to it…for 16 weeks!
» Continue reading “Virgin London Mararthon: Before…”

About a month ago in Runners World mag I saw an advertorial for a new style “body monitor”. I have always been one for gadgets when i’m keeping fit and for anyone that has followed my blogs on and off they will have seen reviews for nike+ kits and are possibly also aware that I now run with a garmin watch which I extract feeds for to show pretty maps on myself. So with that in mind I got in touch with the KiFit guys to see if they had any interface and API available which would make there site a lot more appealing to me by the fact I could extract information and show you what I was eating, doing etc on my blog…

About the same time last year I contacted a similar (cue comments about the tech’s not being similar) organization called MiCoach (I believe) who offered no facility to access data either and weren’t really prepared to talk to me with my techy hat on, however, the people at KiFit seemed a lot more responsive offering me a bit of a demo and also a demo account on there site to see if I could extract what I wanted and whether getting on the device would interest me.

A few days ago over the phone I had a chat with one of the chaps who worked with KiFit and we poked around the system, the user interface seems well constructed and very user friendly. The UI came as a bit of a surprised to me, it felt very polished (however after a bit of digging the Activity Mgr System looks like it has been around for a little bit longer than KiPerformance) and obvious. When you log in you are presented with a very shiny interface that shows your day stats pulling information from an armband you are supposed to wear 24/7 which measure motion, skin response, skin temp, heat flux and steps.

For me, one of the interesting displays is that relating to sleep patterns, something that always intrigues me. Sometimes I wonder whether I have had a bad run because of a poor night sleep or whether it is just another one of those “runners excuses”…

This device can tell whether you are reaching deep sleep and how often you stir during the night. On top of this there are some nicety, how much physical activity your are doing each day is nice and considering this is supposedly on you all the time it measures everything which extends what the Garmin does (plus the Garmins battery life is shocking so would only last half a day!)

Click for larger display

The online platform integrates in your daily food eating patterns which is pretty cool, but whether I would have the will power to store this every day would be interesting, the tool doesn’t quite seem invasive enough to force you to do it – with something that has to be done almost daily you have to have a lot of will power to maintain this. It would be interesting to see whether there stats show peoples inclination to insert dietary data dwindles as time progresses?

Anyway, after a few hours poking around at the UI am I interested? At the moment I would say yes, however, the biggest niggle I have for this device is cost. You can’t use the device without a subscription and you pay a monthly fee for the privilege. Whilst the monthly fee won’t break the bank alone couple this with a gym membership etc and the costs still escalate. Also once you have purchased the device who is to say that the website will still be up and working in 6months time or a new OS come out that renders the device inoperable. I actually think that it would make sense to have both an offline and online system. Garmin have a similar model, sure there offline app is pants but you still have that facility – plus with companies such as Garmin, Nike, Nokia (to an extent) who offer online exercise management tools I think you can rest assured a little bit due to the shear size of the corporation backing it, i’m not so sure about the KiFit, although I would like to be proved wrong…

I will hopefully be granted a little more time to play and poke before my trial account gets revoked – I love the system and if I could extend my running data with all this information there would be a statistics overload on this blog and perhaps I could possibly move to the next stages of health and fitness which is watching the diet.

It gets an initial thumbs up from me except for the monthly subscription costs, I think anyone serious about training either over a long period or up to an upcoming event could seriously benefit from this online diary. I suspect if I used this during my next 12 weeks of marathon training I would have some pretty awesome data on the system…Oh and yes, I managed to get data from there site in order to put on my blog – well I’m half way there, can log on, extract data now just creating the code to display it in a nice way…

If you missed the link at the top of the article you can visit the KiPerformance site here. Anyway – back to running I go…

N

(n.b. I should prob point out I haven’t actually got to use one of these devices or seen what they physically look like I have only had access to the website and sales talk.)