A new running achievement

I don't want to post on here too much about my running but this does go to further show that my foot is still ok. 

Park run went really well. I set off right at the front and took at steady whilst everything settled down and let the 21 minute pacer go past me (I was aiming for the 22 minute pacer) but to my surprise I found myself keeping up with the 21 minute pacer. Well I was stuck about 10 meters behind the group with the pacer. Ideal place for me as (having not run in groups for the past 2 years) I am used to running by myself.

I pretty much forgot to look at my watch but knew I was well under 7 minutes and it turns out it was 6:53. I actually remember being a bit surprised as I knew that sub 21 was faster than this. Sure enough it felt like the pacer picked up the pace a bit and several runners that were near me were dropped as we did the next mile in around 6:30. 

I then felt that the pace slowed a little and as we went into the last 800m I kicked past the 21 minute pacer and tried to stick with a couple of others who were pushing for home. I personally think that I went off a little bit too early as my pace dropped and then I kicked again heading into the finished. I looked down and I was past 3.1 miles before 21 minutes ticked over but didn't cross the finish line until 21:10. 

Sure enough my official park run time is 21:10 but according to my watch I ran 3.16 miles and ran 5k in 20:49. A huge boost to my confidence and shows what you can do on a low carb diet. I actually felt quite good at the end and feel I can go faster given another month of training and the correct tapering. 

Overall I am very happy with that result. To think 3 years ago I couldn't walk without being in extreme pain because of my Ledderhose disease and a year ago I weighed nearly 19 stone and couldn't run sub-30 minutes for 5k. In fact I have only run park run under 30 minutes once before.

My next goal is to make it so that the first digit is a 1. A 19 minute something 5k will be a huge achievement and I am very happy that I can do that this year. 

https://www.endomondo.com/users/6203917/workouts/572420047

Run, fun, shop, pain, sleep

This is my last post for the weekend and it is going to be about my weekend and how it went.

Firstly there was the run. The run was really good and everyone did such a great job. As I have said people run and people walked and gave out leaflets (I did get my highest number of page views for a couple of weeks yesterday) and people came to support as well which was really nice even unexpected people turned up.

There was a downside to the run, my foot. My foot was really hurting by the end of the run even though I tried to sit in a folding chair as much as I could and I had my stick out from pretty much the start of the day I still had to put more weight than I would like on my foot. Still it was amazing of everyone to get together and do all of this for me to get my treatment and to raise money for the British Dupuytren's Society.

Yesterday afternoon I set about sorting out the blog, I got rid or relocated a lot of the junk from the side of the blog which was there initially to get the blog up search ranking but now the content is more than capable of doing that. I have also updated the links and made it so that the blog now has more of a website feel but with the constant stream of personal updates. I managed to do one of my updates for the British Dupuytren's Society which is now awaiting review by them.

My evening last night took a bad turn though, whilst making dinner ready for my wife's imminent arrival my lump kicked off and I had to take my pain killers about 8pm, this led to me being drowsy from 9pm and I was happily snoring away by 10pm which even for me is a little early. 

This morning I could still feel where I had been on my feet yesterday morning but I then managed to make a shop for this blog. Well at the moment it only has two designs which are Gary's Feet and I have Ledderhose Disease. If you want me to make a design for you along these lines let me know and I will see what I can do. Who knows if you wear an "I have Ledderhose Disease" top then someone might ask about it and that is one more person who knows about it and you have helped to raise awareness.