Week 5 has proven to be one of recovery and slowly building to manage my body after the slight niggle I experienced in Week 4.

I decided that this week I would set myself a goal of running five days, as long as my body was up to it, and only a distance of 5km each day. Intensity wise, I was aiming at completing my runs at a 6 minute pace, this being a minute per km slower than what I had worked down previously. As I said, my aim has been to slowly build again and monitor my body to ensure that I am not going to cause any further damage to the strain as this would take me out of running for even longer which would be incredibly frustrating.

Monday’s run started ok. I did feel a little sore through my right abdominal side but it wasn’t painful just not comfortable. I decided to try to compete the run and am glad I did. While not setting the world on fire, I did manage to complete the 5.32km course in 32:09 with an average of 6’02” per km.

The remainder of the week saw ongoing improvement in the times but also how the body was feeling. I have found that the first km I am quite stiff sore am taking a little longer to warmup and get up to speed, I also did not really push myself, keeping to an average pace of around the 5’30” per km. The time throughout the week were as follows:

I am not going to attempt any runs over the weekend, instead taking the time off to give a few days recovery for the body before increasing some distances next week. My aim will be to complete 2 x12km runs on Monday and Friday with only 5km runs on the other days. If this goes well, I will look at increasing the distance again in the following weeks.

I started this week feeling really excited and looking forward to being able to ramp up the distance due to my research paper now being completed and all submitted for review. I tell you, this has been a massive burden off my shoulders and I am feeling so good about that point!

Monday started with a really good 12km run, the run felt good and I was making really good time – I knew it was going to be a PB time. With 3km to go I had a feeling it would be possible to come close to breaking the 1 hour mark for 12km. This is something that I have wanted to do, but thought it would be a while before I’d get there. I tried to keep the pace up, but fell short by 24 seconds of achieving the goal. To say that I was extremely disappointed is an understatement, to come so close but then not achieve it is always hard. I reviewing my splits, it seems that the first three km is where I need to give attention to improve my overall time.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Tuesday’s run proved to be fruitful straight away. The run felt good from the first km and I found myself in another strong position. By the 6km mark I realised that again I could potentially in a position to break the 1 hour mark and tried to maintain my pace to keep on track. By 10km I managed to set a new PB for that distance, coming in at just over 49 minutes. Keeping the pace I managed to achieve the goal coming in at just over 59 minutes for the 12km distance.

The rest of the week proved frustrating though. As a result of the first two days I have managed to cause a strain in my abdominal muscles, when a move faster than walk or rotate slightly I am experiencing discomfort in my right side just above my hip. It has meant that for the first time in the 90 day challenge I haven’t been able to run every week day (missing running on Wednesday – Friday). Frustratingly, it also puts on hold my aim at incorporating at least one 19km run a week.

The weekend has seen me feel a lot better, meaning I am hoping to be able to get back on in the running at the beginning of next week. I think that I will reduce the distance and intensity for the next week and, if it all goes to plan, gradually increase the distance again to get back up to my 12km distances.

This week saw me have to change the pace and length of time out on the road. I still managed to get in a run on every weekday but reduced the length to only being 5km runs. This is due to the research paper I have been working on being due in and I just needed the extra time.

Monday	5.24km	30:51
Tuesday	5.31km	30:27
Wednesday	5.34km	28:18
Thursday	5.27km	27:47
Friday	5.21km	27:41

Next week will see me return to my more consistent longer routine – bring on the 12km efforts!

I have had to make the decision to change the way I am going to provide reflections on my running. As the school term has started and trying to find that right balance it has proven difficult to find the time everyday to write up on the run progress so instead I am going to provide a reflection at the end of each week. I believe that this will be a much more manageable system throughout the challenge.

Week 2 of the challenge has proven to be a good week, there’s been good progress throughout, I did not manage a run each day the weekends still proving to be the hurdle I have not overcome. My runs saw me take on the track around school with the school week starting. The following was managed:

Monday	12km in 1:08:03	1:08:03
Tuesday	12km	1:06:07
Wednesday	5.3km	30:24
Thursday	12km	1:02:00
Friday	5.02km	25:31

Hopefully I can continue to build throughout the next week.

Today is the beginning of the second week of the challenge, and I have hoped to get things back on track. After a great start to the first week, doing 60km in the first five days, I let myself down over the weekend and didn’t do any runs at all. There were a number of reasons behind this, but at the end of the day I just didn’t get it done. All I can do is pick myself back up and try to get back on track throughout this week.

Today saw me return to my running track around the school that I work at. I can’t complain about the beauty of it, I get to run alongside the Canning River for a large part of it. My challenge today was to extend the usual distance that I run, I needed to complete at least 12km instead of the 10km that I had been doing during the term.

I managed to start the run at 5:45am, and it felt pretty good for a first run of the week. The first 1km was under 6 minutes which is always a positive start. I decided on the run that I’d get the extra distance by doing a second lap of Mount Henry Bridge and then loop back to school, it worked well with me completing 12.39km. The time I managed this in was just under 1 hour and 9 minutes at 5’29” per km.

I’ll get back out there tomorrow and see whether I can keep put the pace. I know that there’ll be a couple of longer runs still as the term continues – I just need to get this research paper finished first!

Today I managed to bring up the 60km for the week with another 12km run. No records were set, the first Km was definitely no where near my fastest, but at the end of the day I got the run into my legs which is the primary purpose of the challenge.

It was another beautiful spring morning as I set out on my usual run, clear crisp sky and not too hot at 5:45am. I was feeling a bit tired and a bit blocked from my hay fever, today has not been a great day for this!

This morning saw me thinking of two things, the first being the research paper that I am writing – today is the day that I will start the actual writing to try and have it finished by next Friday! Secondly, how I am going to manage runs over Saturday and Sunday this week, various commitments are going to stretch and challenge me to think creatively!

I didn’t set any records today with the run, completing the 12km in just over 1 hour and 9 minutes. Tomorrow, in thinking creative and to give my legs a break I think it will just be a 5km run.

Looking forward to the change up over the coming weekend!

I found myself feeling a little sore and heavy this morning when I started off on the run. Again, I have found myself starting a little later than I had hope, being on the road by 5:40am but with me being on holidays, I don’t mind the later start. I can probably attribute the soreness in the muscles to yesterday’s activities, I went to Treetop Adventures in Yanchep National Park and spent a few hours climbing various high ropes obstacle. It was awesome fun, but think it has had an impact on the body having moved in ways that it is not used to!

I knew that the run was not going to be as fast as yesterday, not only because of the soreness but because the first kilometre came in quite slow at 6’20”, almost 40″ slower than yesterday. However, once in routine it got a little better. I was thinking about the longevity of the run and the known hurdles that I will have to come to ensure that the full challenge is completed, I think the first big hurdle will be the first weekend – how am I going to get a run in on the weekends, and what will this look like? Will I commit to trying to doing another 12km run, or treat the two days as more recovery / easy days and do a lesser amount to give the body time to recover a little?

I found my attention turning to this research paper that I am going to be writing on TIPE. I have started collating the ideas for the various segments. My intended approach is to try to start it either tonight or tomorrow night, probably by first laying out the subheadings and starting to write one of the sections. This will either the introduction looking at Pastoral Care and Welling structures, they important roles school can play in delivering programs that enhance wellbeing due to their unique role in society in provision of a holistic education and confusion / challenges in implementing and delivering programs due to an unclear definition of wellbeing and the complex challenges faced by students, staff and school administrators, or looking at the role parents and fostering supportive relationships plays. I am setting myself a deadline of trying to have the paper done by Friday week, fingers crossed I can get it done!

The third day into the challenge proved to be a good one.
After a couple of hiccups early, a later start due to a disrupted sleep throughout the night, and then having forgotten to do a few tasks around the house I managed to hit the road by 5:45am.
The run felt good, I tend to know inside the first kilometre what sort of run it is going to be by the pace, my first one came in at 5’45” which is a good 30″ faster than I have run the previous two mornings. I managed to keep good pace for the entire run, completing the 12km in 1:04:24 which is an average pace of 5’22”.

I also managed to hit a new milestone today, bringing up the 1,000 km for the year. The funny thing is that I might be able to come close to running another 1,000km over the course of this challenge if I manage to keep up the pace!

The run was spent thinking about a research paper that I have been working on that looks into the benefits Trauma Informed Positive Education (TIPE) practices in schools and the benefits to this approach not only for students who experience complex trauma, but every student and also the benefits to the wellbeing of staff in schools. This morning I was specifically thinking about the role of parents and developing an effective partnership with parents to support the growth and development of students in schools and the obstacles that could possibly be present in developing these partnerships. I am hoping to start writing this paper in the next day or so with it being completed by next Friday.

Tomorrow morning will prove another opportunity to grow in my running journey.

This morning was a struggle, there have been many days like this in the past and I know that there will be plenty of more in the future. Basically, most things that could have gone wrong this morning did go wrong, which seems to be the way when starting a new challenge – getting forward momentum in the initial weeks is the hardest part!

The challenges started this morning when my alarm went off at 5:00am and instead of getting up I pushed snooze. Normally, this is ok and I’ll be up 10 minutes later however this morning I pushed the wrong button on my alarm which meant instead of being on snooze it just muted the alarm and it kept going silently. It pushed the start back to 5:45am instead – not ideal. The fun continued when as a consequence of that my phone which I use to map my distance and track my progress was on 1% battery…seems that I wasn’t the only one on low battery this morning! I decided to push though regardless of whether the phone went dead or not, I wasn’t going to fail in the challenge on only second day!

Once into the run, it was quite pleasant, not an overly fast pace, mirroring pretty much to the second the run from yesterday at a 5’52” pace over the 12km. I did manage to take a moment on my way back when seeing some short-billed galahs to appreciate the contrast between urbanisation and nature. I also had the realisation that if I do manage to complete the challenge I’ll be needing another pair of new shoes before the end of the year. Doing the calculations, if I manage to run comparatively to the first two days (which I can’t see why I won’t) I could be potentially running 1,080km over the course of the challenge. It will be interesting to see how close to this mark I hit, I don’t have a distance goal but it will be interesting to see where it ends up.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for energy levels, I think that really monitoring my bedtime will become an increasingly important of ensuring success in this one.

Bring on Day Three.

Over the past few years I have continued to get into my personal running. I can hand on my heart say that incorporating it into my weekly routine has change my life.

When people find out that I run, they ask “what is the purpose? Are you training for an event? How can you possibly commit to do that regularly?” My reply seems to always astound them. I don’t train for an event or to race, in fact I have never competed in a race, it’s not the reason that I run, putting it simply I run for me. I get up between 5:00 and 5:15am each morning and run for me, it is my time to myself to process the day ahead and what things I might face in my work day. I have found that running enables me to be centred, grounded, and present in the current moment focusing on nothing but my breathing and the sound of my feet hitting the pavement in front of me. Putting it simply, it has helped my overall mental health and wellbeing in ways that I did not think was possible when I am made the move from the gym to the outdoors back when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t always easy to pull on the shoes and start, there have been days I have missed – winter is especially a challenge when you’re starting and finishing in the dark and it’s either cold or raining. However, all I try to come back to is how good it feels once I complete the run. The accomplishment always out weighs the cost.

Setting goals is something that I have always liked to do, it gives me something to work towards and to finish off 2023 I have decided to set a new goal – a 90 day running challenge where I will run everyday, rather than my target of five days a week with two rest days that I have tried to do throughout the year with variable success. Starting today, will see me finish on the 30th of December – a great way to see out the year.

This morning saw my first run completed of the challenge, doing 12 kms in an hour and ten minutes. I left on my holiday circuit at 5:15am, running along the freeway before circling Lake Monger and returning. It’s not the fastest pace that I have done, with it sitting at an average pace of 5’52” per km – but it won’t be a matter of pace in this challenge. It’s about the consistency and commitment every day. I will try to write a short post each day to share any reflections and thoughts I have on the run…we’ll see how that goes.

This morning when running I had an overwhelming sense of gratitude for my life, the people in it and the opportunities I have. It has made me think about remembering to show gratitude and name things that I am grateful every day, I have some thinking to do as to how about I will action this…it might be through a gratitude journal each day…

Looking forward to what comes tomorrow 🙂