I just found out that today is Global Running Day! An appropriate day to have completed my first run since last week; 3.52km in 30 minutes.

It’s been just over a week since I went to London and ran in the Vitality London 10,000. I already wrote about how proud I am of myself, but to celebrate Global Running Day today, I want to tell you about some observations I made about myself while I was doing it.

The major one was that rather than becoming tired, having expended my energy, I actually found that the experience, in particular the actual running, got easier as I went along. My total time was 1h22m19s but the timing devices on our shoes also recorded the time at which we crossed the 5km halfway point and it turned out that I completed the second 5km 8 minutes faster than the first 5km!

One factor of this I think is the breaking down of the mental barriers that had got me so nervous. In training I’d be getting tired and sore around 2 or 3 km and I’d think ‘I can’t do it’ and stop. On the day of the 10k though, giving up and going home wasn’t an option. I had to push through whatever I was feeling and just get on with it. Doing that, and finishing the race gave me the proof that actually – I can do it!

Another observation which was slightly less positive was that my ankles were BURNING. That’s part of what I had to push through and fortunately that got more bearable and less severe as I went along. I ran from the start line and the first time I felt like I had to slow down and walk was because my ankles were hurting. But as soon as I slowed down, they hurt even more! That was a pretty unpleasant conundrum. I’ve been to see a sports physio who suggested that the burning pain may be some irritation/inflammation of the tendons around my ankle joints. I need to take it easy until I’ve had that investigated a little further I think, because I was told that that type of irritation can increase the chances of stress fractures. But I’m not going to stop running and I’m going to aim to run 5k regularly now as part of a general exercise routine.

This newfound ability to run makes me feel like a kid with a new toy!