End of the first month of 2018

With January coming to a close, a quick update on my progress this month. My half marathon training is drawing to an end, and I've got just over a week until race day. The training has seen my mileage increase massively and I've now covered nearly a quarter of my target distance through the Under Armour You vs The Year challenge for the year in 31 days.

At this rate I will hit the 300 km marker during my the Worthing Half Marathon race on 11th February.

I mentioned I had order the Suunto Spartan HR Baro in my last post, and I've now been using this a few weeks. Really like the watch and battery life is excellent as well as the support that Suunto provide. I've joined a beta program for a new app for the watch and it's been great seeing the feedback the company gives and receives on this program and certainly seem to be listening to customer feedback as they develop the new app. Right now I'm syncing into Strava still and can't see me changing that but the detailed stats the watch produces is much better than I was seeing from the Apple Watch. I still love the Apple Watch and that is still on my wrist.

Another challenge I set myself this month was to fill all my activity rings on the Apple Watch through January as well as workout everyday. As it stands, I only have my Stand ring left to fill today and with only 7 hours left to record at 09:56 I think I can assume I'll achieve that goal.

I'm now pretty much doing 10km runs as my short runs 4 days a week or so, with a long 21km+ run on a Sunday. I'm amazed how much fitter I have become in such a short space of time, although getting the longer runs in means getting up much earlier and right now the weather hasn't been brilliant!

I haven't spent a great deal of time in the Gym this month, but after I get the next race out of the way I want to focus a little more on strength to fully prepare me for the marathon in April. In between the Half and Full I have now signed up for the Lancing College 10k. This is a new race and pretty much on my doorstep so a good option for me.

I've rounded the month off with my fastest 10k and last weekend managed to hit my objective for the Half Marathon of 2 hours on a training run. Happy running!

100Km in!

A great start to 2018 and I've got my 100km badge for the You v Year challenge already and on target to get 200km in the bank by the end of the month! It took me until November to finish the challenge last year so hopefully I can smash this in 6 months.

In my last post I talked about the Suunto Spartan and have taken the plunge with the Spartan HR Baro model, should hopefully be here this weekend and I can get my long run in using it.

I've also got another new pair of shoes, Saucony Hurrican ISO4's to replace my Hoka One One Araki's. As much as I loved the Hoka's I was finding them a little cramped in the toe and was getting some really bad blisters on my long runs. The Saucony's are almost as cushioned but a feel great on the long runs so I'm feeling quite happy for the races ahead. For xmas I got some Runderwear and they are awesome! I've also got some weird Injini toe socks which seem ok and take some getting used to but will keep trying them and work out what my sock of choice will be for the race later on.