#RUNNING CHALLENGE TO LOSE WEIGHT FULL#

One was an increase of 10 seconds over my previous best time. I’ve set new PRs over my usual Strava segments. My VO2 Max has increased from 50 to 52 according to Garmin. I am making myself a rule to not do this for the next 30 days during work time. I became obsessed with looking up running articles and reading research/reddit. I have a friends Stag Do next week which will be the final test! I managed to get up every morning aiming to just do a slow pace run, but after 15 minutes I usually felt fine.

When I got home, I drank lots of water and took some to bed with me for during the night. The interesting thing was rather than make fun of me, my mates actually joined in saying they didn’t want to drink too much either. I'd skip a round of beers if I wasn’t finished my last one. What changed was that I knew I needed to get up the next morning to run, so I swapped a beer for a pint of diet coke and paced myself. I’ve had 5 big drinking nights over the last 30 days. I’ve purchased some 3M Transpore tape on the recommendations in this post “How do you protect your nipples?” This caused my nipples to go red raw from chaffing. No treats after meals, limit myself to 2-3 pieces of fruit a day.ĭespite England's reputation, it only rained once in the last 30 days during my run. I’m going back to strict dieting for September. I think the issue was I allowed myself a treat most days before bed as I figured all the running everyday justified it. I weighed myself today and I am 83Kg (183Lbs), more or less where I started at 82Kg (180Lbs). I have had no problem sleeping in the last 30 days. This has a 100% success rate, I'll be asleep in minutes. I started meditating, focusing on my breath if I was thinking too much when I needed to sleep.

#RUNNING CHALLENGE TO LOSE WEIGHT FULL#

I sometimes have trouble falling asleep as my head is full of thoughts and can lay in bed for hours awake. I needed to fix my sleep as I knew I had to get up and run the next morning. In the past I would have just gone for a run at lunch time, but that doesn’t fit in with the habit forming plan.

I bought a Head Torch as the mornings are getting darker and I’m running around 6am-6:30am before the kids get up. I went shopping for more running clothes, I used to have 2 outfits, I now have 3 which means less stress with washing. I probably need to increase distance now to improve. Week 4 - 1 day Threshold/10x Explosive Hill Sprints, 1x Long Run. I will leave the new shoes a full week before trying again.

My legs killed the next day after this, I don’t know if it was the long run or the new shoes the next day. I also wore a new pair of shoes on the recovery day after the long run with my aim to rotate shoes to avoid injury. I combined the threshold running day with the hill sprints, running threshold pace to the hill, then easy pace home. Week 3 - 1 day Threshold/8x Explosive Hill Sprints, 1x Long Run Hill sprints only hurt a little this time. I calculated my recovery rate heart rate and setup alerts on my Garmin watch to notify me when I changed heart rate zones. Week 2 - 1 day Threshold run, 1 day 6x Explosive Hill Sprints I also struggled to keep my easy runs easy, my pace kept increasing by lack of concentration. The first week I tried to keep easy, but made the mistake of performing my first hill sprint at 4 repeats rather than the 2 the article suggested, my legs were killing for about 4 days. Week 1 - 1 day Threshold run, 1 day 4x Explosive Hill Sprints My aim is not to get injured again!Įveryday was the same 5K distance run at easy/recovery pace at about 6am, except for every 3-4 days where I’d replace that easy run with a workout as below, but maintaining the minimum of 5K. I’m hoping running shorter distances everyday is better than running longer distances less frequently. I am also coming back to running from an injury and have completely changed my running form to midfoot, so I am focusing on short distances and easy paces. I also had been reading about forming good habits, and how performing the same task everyday at the same time was a good way to program your mind to do this. I thought maybe this running everyday would change that! My aim was <75Kg (165Lbs), but I have been stuck at about 82Kg (180Lbs) since April while dieting, but not being strict about it (it is summer BBQ season!).

I was 96Kg (212Lbs) on New Year's Day, 3 months later I was 81Kg (179Lbs) (strict dieting). I only seem to lose weight if I’m extremely strict counting every calorie, when I’m not I gradually increase in weight. I was also inspired by recent research in the news that people who exercise regularly at the same time of day are most likely to keep weight off. I had already been running the last 3 days in a row, so decided to see if I could keep it up for 30 days in a row, today I reached that goal! 27 days ago I was inspired by this post I ran every day for 30 days - here's what happened.

Running challenge to lose weight