WHERE HAVE I BEEN??

Ive been working long, hard, 12 hour days driving around the north west of England and have had very little time or energy to do any exercise at all.
since my last blog, which seems like 21 days ago, i have been to my physio and been told to "go away"....politely and if there is no more pain and stiffness in my calf, "that i should never go again" yippee!!!! so i have to keep stretching my calfs and keep up my good work ;-)

last Monday i took the first steps toward training for my 10k "race" in Manchester next May, i had been reading a "running for beginners" magazine during my breaks on the road, that stated i should start slowly, walking 5 mins and running for  1 minute, sounded like a good plan to get me started. bearing in mind the last time i had run or should i say "tried" to run i was over 2 stone heavier and had a problem calf, so i walked about 250 yards till i got to the gates of Carey park, then i started to jog, it felt good, in fact so good i ignored or should i say "forgot" about the walking part and just kept going fully expecting to feel bad in a few hundred yards....i didn't and kept on running all the way round until i reached the gates again on the way out of the park, i walked the 250 yards back to my flat as my warm down.  click this link to view that run 
i hadn't felt so at ease running for about 20 odd years, I've never been a good runner, its always been a struggle, at school i hated cross country, i was more of a sprinter at junior school but when i went to high school i don't know what went wrong, i seemed to be running backwards compared to the others, they grew tall and i stayed a little short arse. the regular twice weekly runs when i joined the army seemed to help a lot, i felt i was improving but the disciplined routine of the army apprentice college fell away when i got my first posting to Catterick, i seemed to struggle after that, the emphasis was no longer on fitness but more on the job itself supplying the rest of the army with kit from nuts and bolts to heavy artillery and everything in between.
the days after Mondays run my legs were slightly stiff, i wasn't like a board but i knew i had done something i hadn't for a long long time, the aches gradually faded away and today, Sunday, i woke up early, my running gear was already by my bed so i got straight into running mode, put my heart monitor on, fired up my garmin forerunner 405cx and set off out of the door at walking pace to warm up a bit, it was very cold and id wished i had found my fluorescent running gloves as fingerless cycling gloves leave the extremity's of my fingers vulnerable to the nippy cold air, wimp you say!!! got to be comfortable to enjoy the run which in turn will not make it a chore to do, so that's my next task finding them!! anyway back to the run, i started running before i had reached the gates this time, i had set off on the same course as Monday thus giving me a baseline to work from to see if it had become any easier, i think i will stick to this course for a while so i can monitor any improvements, will there be any???? certainly hope so. i found it slightly harder than Monday, i don't know whether that is down to the time of day, i hadn't eaten anything before i went out, I'm not good doing exercise after eating, lets just say things don't stay down inside my body! i was fully expecting to get so far into the run and feel like i needed to stop but i seemed to develop a sense of determination and kept saying "keep going" and indeed i did, i managed not only to run all the way to the gates but all the way back to the flat. i downloaded my efforts from my garmin to my laptop, you can view the run HERE, the results are improving and i had my heart monitor on this time so i can see how much effort it is taking me in future.
so i am hoping that work will allow me to get a run in next week, in an ideal world i guess running Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday would be great, maybe i will have to get up early to achieve that.