I should do this more often

For some reason, when I woke up this morning, I was randomly reminded that I told my friend Heather I'd run the Great Scottish Run half marathon with her in October. Well, not with her. She's super super speedy and I get overtaken by walkers when I run. But in the same race as her.

Having told her this on Facebook several weeks ago (while still on a high from the Great Edinburgh Run) I immediately forgot about it until this morning, when I suddenly realised that the 5th of October is a whole lot closer than it sounds, and I counted the weeks in my calendar…twelve. The exact number of weeks in most half marathon training plans. Better get started then.

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So I chose a training plan (I'm using the Bupa intermediate half marathon plan - I thought the Bupa beginner 10-mile plan worked brilliantly for the GER) and got out there. 30 minutes later I'm back, pretty proud of having managed 2.8 miles in 29 minutes when I've only run once since the beginning of May. Obviously, I'd be prouder if I'd managed to keep my running up even though I didn't have an event to train for, but I can't do anything about that now. And, considering my legs weren't all that happy with suddenly being made to run for half an hour after 2 months off, I really enjoyed it..I should definitely do this more often!

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I'm not sure the intermediate plan is going to be right for me - it involves four runs a week, and will supposedly take me from 3 miles to 6 within the first 3 weeks…eek. However, I've mistrusted training plans before and they've always worked, so I'll see how this one goes, and drop down to the beginner one (or mix-and-match a bit) if I'm struggling.

In other news, my resolve not to spend money on things I don't need was severely tested yesterday when I saw these:

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These and loads more utterly brilliant book-related slogan tops are sold by Activate Apparel and I really, really want them all! I'm a big fan of slogan Ts to work out in. Yesterday I played a tennis match in a top that said "It's a pleasure to beat you." Sadly, the effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that I lost.