I didn’t enjoy the first kilometre of Friday’s run, despite it being a nice day. I hadn’t slept that well, and I wasn’t really in the mood for running. Nevertheless, I plugged away down the towpath, turned into Leigh Woods at the far end, climbed the steep hill without too much ado, albeit very slowly, and kept going until I was nearly back at the Suspension Bridge.

I stopped at 7km, making it my longest run of the year so far. Doesn’t seem bad for a day where I wasn’t really feeling it.

It’s been raining a bit recently, which tends to flood sections of the towpath. When I got back home, my shoes looked like this:

…and that made me consider buying a new pair.

Sadly, these Mizuno Wave Inspire 7s have been, well, a bit rubbish. I had trouble buying a pair at all, then I had to send the first pair back because they gave me a blister, and I’ve never felt that great in the replacements. Which was a shame, after the Wave Inspire 5s and 6s were so good for me.

Then I did a bit of searching on the internet, and found that pretty much everyone who bought the Wave Inspire 7s seems to have disliked them, or at least those who’ve blogged and commented about the things. So it wasn’t just me.

The good news is that everyone who then took a punt on the new Wave Inspire 8s seems to think they’re a return to the good form of the earlier Wave Inspires. So, I will probably take my chances with Mizuno once again, though my faith is a bit shaken.

Hopefully a pair of new shoes will put a bit of bounce back in my step, even if it’s only psychologically-speaking…

Anyway. Enough rambling for now. I should be running later on this week, so I’ll see you then!

Just a simple 6K along the towpath and back yesterday. I ran yesterday partly because I felt like it, and partly because it looked like it might be the last non-rainy day of the week. It was properly wintry yesterday, around 6C, but I was fine once I’d warmed up.

Apart from that, nothing to report. Have a nice week!

This week I decided in advance that I’d go out on Thursday, just because I wanted to pick a day and stick to it. And not wait until the last minute, like I did last week. So this morning, I put on my jogging clothes first thing, as a hint to myself, though I’m working from home and had a Skype meeting at 9am, so I couldn’t go out straight away.

But, with the morning’s work behind me, I finally grabbed my water bottle, got out the door and did a simple, slow 5K. Don’t pay too much attention to the awful time, not only does that include a lot of elevation but also ten minutes of warm up/cool down walking. So I’m not too unhappy.

And it got me out of the house, and into Clifton Village for some shopping and some lunch. Broke up the otherwise-insular home working nicely, anyway.

Next run? Maybe at the weekend. We’ll see.

In my defence, I was still feeling ill for the first part of the week, plus the weather’s not exactly been conducive. But given that I woke up with a headache yesterday morning and felt rubbish all day, and then had to force myself out for a run because it was the end of the week, maybe I should have braved the wind and gone out earlier.

So — lesson for next week: don’t wait until the weather’s nice and you’re feeling great. It might not happen…

I’m ill. Which is fine. I’d specifically planned to do bugger-all during the period between Christmas and New Year, and if you’re going to loaf about unshaven for a few days, you might as well fit a cold in while you do it.

It helps that — so far — it’s just a regular winter lurgy of a sore throat and a run-down feeling, not hideous full-blown flu. Hopefully it won’t get too much worse, or last more than a few days. And the enforced slowing down gives me a chance to reflect on my running, my general fitness, and my plans for the year ahead.

Like many, I think about resolutions at this time of year. Last week, I was at Avebury for the Winter Solstice, there for the dawn, to see in the turning point toward longer days. It seems a good time for looking forward as well as back.

But you have to be careful about resolutions. As Merlin Mann observed in the latest Back to Work podcast, people tend to be a little binary about new year’s resolutions. And it’s possible that that’s especially true of programmers, like myself. “I’ll run three times a week”, I think to myself, “Just like I used to.”

But how realistic is that? To go from — given my last few weeks’ record — no runs a week, straight to three? And how much of a fall am I setting myself up for if I don’t do three runs a week in the first week of January? If I haven’t done three runs a week, then my resolution’s “failed”, and there’s always that tendency to think, “well, I might as well give up, then.” Failed or succeeded, true or false: binary thinking.

Also, how realistic am I being about my past performance? Well, luckily, I have RunKeeper’s “FitnessReports” feature, so I can easily check. In 2010, a good year for running for me, I actually only averaged 1.3 runs per week. And that was a good year. So my initial “I used to do three runs a week” was, in fact, utter rubbish. Sure, there were some weeks where I did three runs, but not many. I think nostalgia has me mentally inflating how “good” I used to be.

So, what to do instead?

The question seems to be answering itself. I resolve to run every week in January. At least once. Just to get myself started again. That’ll be more runs in a month than I’ve managed for ages, but still sounds very achievable. And if I don’t manage that, I won’t count myself a failure, either. I’ll just look into why I didn’t manage it, forgive myself, and figure out a way to keep trying.

And I’m not going to worry about the weight, yet. You can easily cram too many resolutions into a new year, spreading yourself too thinly across all of them. I’ll have a think about the weight and my eating patterns when we get to February. For now, I’m just going to run.

How about you? Got any resolutions? How realistic are they? Do you have any hard evidence that you’ve ever been as “good” as you’re planning to be? (Looking back at my own records surprised me!) And are you setting yourself up for that “oh, I didn’t manage this exact goal, so there’s no point in carrying on trying” moment?

Or are you prepared to forgive yourself and make adjustments as you go along?

Not much to report, really, other than the fresh air did me good. Plus, as I wasn’t jogging, I got to bring out the big camera, so here are my snaps from the afternoon!

So, yesterday I went out and took advantage of my new working patterns to fit in a little 5K plod down the Portway. It was clear, cold day, and it was lovely.

I’ll leave you with a photo taken from a couple of kilometres out of town

Tonight’s jog was chillier and darker, and was a simple 5K down the Portway. It was too dark for photography, which is a shame, because on my way back home I heard the flapping of large wings down by the water and looked across in time to see a heron come in to land on the bank of the Avon. I’ve seen them before on river trips up toward Avonmouth, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one as close to the city as I did tonight. Nice!

Neither run had many aches or pains, so I reckon getting out there a bit more frequently is definitely helping.

Anyway. Busy weekend coming up, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get out for a run much before Monday or Tuesday. Have a good weekend, whatever you’re doing. And take advantage of any sun that you can find!

I also got out early enough to snap the sun just rising over the Suspension Bridge. There are limited vantage points with a good view of the bridge from the towpath, so I figured I’d try a different kind of shot, this one through some bare Autumn branches, to try to get something a bit less “same-y”. I think it worked quite nicely.

I did get out for a mid-week jog, a 5K down the Portway on Thursday. And it was pretty horrible, to be honest. I was achey and slow and really not up for it. Even though it was only 5K, I felt like I had to walk a couple of times on the way back. Body and mind were just not up for it.

Here’s some hope, though; a report from my friend Jose on his latest run:

Monday saw the only my fourth run of the last eight weeks, and boy, was I creaky. The first couple of miles hurt, no doubt about that, but then… then the muscles and bones and bits of cartilage and lungs and all other associated hanging together bits remembered how it all went and everything fell into place. Those following two and half miles were much, much better. I’m not there yet, I need to run and run and run, but that lovely feeling of being able to run 18 miles in one go will return. Eventually.

My hope, specifically, being that I’ve just not been running often enough nor far enough recently, and that if I get out and stretch my current limits a bit, maybe I’ll work through the aches and pains a bit — break through the creakiness barrier — and start feeling good for more of my running.

I’m going to try to get out for a long, slow run today or tomorrow; it looks like we’ve got pretty good weather lined up for most of the weekend, so I should take advantage of it…