Head over Heels 2014

So the beginning of the month was spent in Taiwan. I went there on holiday with my mum to visit my brother. Thankfully I did have some will power and managed to run almost every other day while there.  This was massively helped by having my mum there running too.  She has never been a runner but has recently, in her fifties, taken up the sport.  She is an absolute inspiration to me and should be to everybody.  Its hard enough to convince myself to run some days and I’ve been running for years.  My mum has never had any interest in running, so if she has the will power and motivation to put on her trainers and go out running in the sweaty, smoggy, streets of taiwan, there is no way I can be lazy and
sit on my backside!

We mostly ran around the university track that I used to run around when I lived in Taiwan.  It’s just under a kilometre around so can become quite tedious after a few laps but its better than getting run over by the millions of scooters on the roads.  One day we ventured further and went for a run along the beach front.  There are 200m markers along the footpath so I broke out into some sprints for the first time in many years. This isn’t particularly useful for my African training but is a nice way to break up the boredom of long slow runs.

Being on holiday for the first part of March slowed down training a tad but I don’t mind as it’s the only time I’ll be going away before Africa so I made the most of the break.  I managed to get over 100 miles in this month which I’m pretty happy about. Slowly increasing the mileage is how I would like things to go.  Something very exciting that has come from this month is that the Sports and Exercise department at Manchester Metropolitan University are very interested in talking to us about the run and hopefully letting us play in the environment chambers that they have.  Paula Radcliffe has used the very same chambers in her training. How cool is that!  Cant wait to go play!

March total distance: 118.7 miles

March longest run: 18 miles