A game of two halves -day 3 everydayinmay

Today Leicester CIty football club won the English premier league, and breakfast radio was full of football chatter as well it might be. The win is a fantastic achievement by an unheralded club who had narrowly avoided relegation in the previous season, and says much about teamwork and charismatic management.

Nice to wake up to good news for a change.

So by way of a small homage to the beautiful game – my run today was a game of two halves.

At 6.15 and catching the tail end of a heavy rain shower I did 1.55 miles zig zagging up and down my neighbourhood streets. Several years experience of December daily running has given me a curious knowledge of how you can tally up a mile or two close to home.

Then as my Nike+ lady might tell me – ‘half way point’.

Next I jumped in my car and drove from Edinburgh to Dunfermline where on Tuesdays I do a training session before work with my PT Katie. The park where we train is hilly – but I volunteered to have lots of hill work for today’s session to fit in some distance. Meaning that the second run was mixed up with frog jumps, squats, walking lunges, and press ups.

Commentators might describe my second half performance as lacking the enthusiasm and brio of the opening first half minutes, and as I discovered it takes a fair few sets of hill reps to cover 1.55 miles.

Day 3 3.15 miles

EDIM total 12.5 miles

May Day run – but not yet casting my clouts :)

Yesterday as on most Saturdays, I joined my good chum Alison for one of our weekend runs. The sun was shining, birds were singing, the sky was blue and everywhere there were signs of spring. We were glad that we had chosen that day to do a longer run than usual and completed a very enjoyable 10 miler along a familiar route – out and back to Balerno on the Dell path.

Today is the first of May – May day. A day when tradition has it that young maidens might rise early and wash their faces in morning dew, a day to set up the Maypole and dance around with the May queen, of Beltane and other festivals to celebrate that Spring is here. (apologies for this rather uninformed brief skim around May traditions – more research needed).

But today the weather is not very May-like in Edinburgh at least – so my May 1st run was under grey skies with a blustery wind and temperatures back into single figures and to be honest did not feel very Spring like. While yesterday I was running in a sleeveless vest, today it was back to Scottish running wear and plenty of layers. I certainly will not be casting my clouts just yet – even though yesterday the May blossom was well and truly out.

No matter – I like to run in all weathers , and today is the first day of a challenge I have joined – Everydayinmay. This event was set up by Sally Pinnegar to raise funds for Dimbleby Cancer Care, a charity that she has a very personal connection with and sits well with Sally’s approach to life in general – eating healthily, living well and getting outdoors.

As the name suggests it is a challenge to undertake self-powered movement every day in May – walk, cycle, run ,swim, kayak,dance whatever. Being as I am a creature of habit I am aiming to run 5k each day – and looking forward to being part of the collective effort to raise funds.

I am going to try to blog about my efforts reasonably frequently, so just a bit advance notice of repetition. I am not actively fundraising – but if anyone reading this would like to make a donation to this very deserving charity you can sponsor Scout. Scout also takes part in Everydayinmay and writes a very funny blog about his adventures. His Just Giving page is here