The Running Challenge | One Week On

Hello my friends and a happy Wednesday to you! There's me last week writing a blog post with a round up of lots of Autumn themed things and we appear to be in the midst of some sort of crazy late summer. Heat waves, thunder storms, sweaty nights. I really don't know where I stand right now. All I know is that last night was a really uncomfortable, sticky night...yet when I woke up, there was a frost outside. Seriously, Autumn anyone? Please?! I'm just sitting here praying for pumpkins and mittens!
But...I digress...
The point of today's post is to give you a weekly update on how I am doing with my Running Challenge that I began last week. If you're a regular here you may have seen my other challenges that I have undertaken in a bid to life a healthier, more active lifestyle. I did a water challenge and a five-a-day challenge.

So I began my challenge last week, and the aim was that I was going to run three times a week. I left the distance and duration deliberately ambiguous because I didn't really know where I was at with regards to fitness and where I needed to start from. Well I can tell you that this week I have indeed managed to go running three times. Bosun has thoroughly enjoyed himself, he is my main running buddy...and he will always do better than me...always.

At the weekend I downloaded a running app called Map my Run by Under Armour (I really like Under Armour) so my first run that I did on Thursday doesn't count (boo!) but I went running on Sunday and Tuesday and those runs have both been tracked. I really like this app. It's easy to use, straight forward in the way it reports your workout stats to you, and you can connect it to other fitness devices if you have them such as fitbits, garmins, apple watch etc.


So my cool new app has set me a personal target of running for a total of 1 hour a week and then we'll go from there to see how I can improve. This is a very do-able target as it stands and I'm confident I will achieve it as it appears that I am doing 20 minutes, three times a week anyway. The app hopefully will then set me new targets every week to improve my fitness. And by the way if you're wondering why it took me more time to run a shorter distance, it's because it was A LOT of uphill!

I will check in with you next week and let you know how I'm getting on with my running. I've actually really enjoyed it so far. Bosun got a little bit confused at first. He always gets excited when I stick my wellies on, but he didn't connect me tying up my Asics with going out so he was very surprised to find out that we were going to do something fun. I mainly jog, but do little sprint races with Bosun just to get my heart pumping and to make sure he has as much fun as possible. I think he likes it.

Have you been getting back into fitness?