Ow ow ow ow ow!

Oh dear, it was all going so well...

This morning I set out with the intention of doing another 5-miler, hoping (in vain, as it turns out) to recreate the dizzy success of a fortnight ago.

Unfortunately, my malfunctioning body had other ideas.

I'd gone about 5K and was feeling fine and, dare I say it, fairly comfortable when I was struck with this horrible griping pain just under my ribs on both sides of my torso. It was sort of like a bad stitch, but not, and I slowed right down to a ridiculously slow pace while I waited for it to go away (poor Mark was just walking alongside me at this point, freezing half to death).

But annoyingly it didn't go away: it just got worse.

So at just 5.98K (rather than the 8K I was going for), I realised that it wasn't going to get any better and that it was time to stop being so blinking stubborn about it. Feeling pretty hard done by (and really cold!), I walked the last 2K home.

I don't know what the problem was. Mark says that sometimes everyone just has bad running days (like bad hair days!) and that I shouldn't worry about it.

Oh well, hopefully things will work out better next time :-).

Here are the stats for this run:

Distance: 5.98K
Time: 56 minutes 27 seconds
Average K pace: 9 minutes 26 seconds

5 whole miles!!!

Today I ran the longest distance I've ever run ever - just over 5 miles!

I feel very proud :-).

It was actually a really lovely course - all winding rural roads and big posh houses and spring sunshine - and it was somewhere near where I live that I've never seen before (which is always nice :-) ).

Mark did embarrass me by taking various photos and film clips of me as I went (well, I needed a 'running'-y picture of me for my sponsorship page, after all) but in all other respects it was really fab. I didn't at any point feel sick or like I needed to stop or like I wanted to collapse on the nearest patch of vaguely flat earth. I just felt... fine. I even managed to have non-huffing-and-puffing conversations with Mark about things that actually made sense.

Yay :-).

In other good news, my sponsorship page is now live! Should you wish to sponsor me, you can find my page here .

Or should you wish to provide support in a more esoteric fashion by sending me good vibes and/or encouraging thoughts, please feel free to go ahead and start sending them this way.

Or even better, leave me a comment. I love getting comments!

Aaanyway... back to business.

Stats for this run:

Distance: 8.2 K
Time: 1 hour 15 minutes and 2 seconds
Average K pace: 9 minutes 9 seconds