My Running Journey & 5 Reasons You Should do a Running Event

The speaker discusses their running journey and provides five reasons why people should sign up for a running event. They talk about their own experience with running, including participating in a half marathon and a marathon. They emphasize the progress they made in their running abilities over time and highlight the benefits of goal setting, sense of achievement, race day atmosphere, and personal growth associated with running events. They also mention upcoming events they are participating in and encourage listeners to share the podcast with others. Hello and welcome to episode 3 of the progress pod. Really enjoying doing these, getting some good feedback from them as well so yeah any topics or if you guys are listening to it share it and I'm all ears for any sort of topics you guys want to hear. Still in the process of getting some guests on the show so over the next month or so we should have that in place. So yeah today's episode I'm going to be diving into my running journey and five reasons why I think you should sign up for a running event. I did a post on this recently but just wanted to dive into it in a bit more detail. So just to kind of start off in terms of my own running journey like I'm really big into the running side of things at the moment but it hasn't always been like that. I mentioned in the first podcast that I used to do a lot of running when I was younger purely for football reasons like if I wasn't training or playing football I'd just kind of go out a run. There was like no structure to it, I didn't know what pace I was running I would just like go out a run and it could honestly be anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour and a half. Like sometimes I would just go out in a slow run for an hour and a half with no structure and what I probably wasn't realising at the time was doing those long slow runs if I didn't have football training or something like that was actually probably building up a really decent cardiovascular base and just really long really slow runs and I've never been the quickest over short distances like sprints and stuff has just never been my strong point but yeah other than doing some running for football and the odd 10k event I think I did when I was maybe like 12 or 13 I didn't really do a lot of other sort of focused running I've never been a member of a running club or anything like that but despite all that I knew that over the kind of longer distances I felt like I could go and run a lot longer than say some of my friends or some of my football teammates so I knew there was always kind of something in there and once I turned about 18 19 the I did basically zero run at that point it was all about the gym all about trying to get stronger trying to get that muscle on and just trying to look better essentially so at that point in time as well early 20s I'd probably stopped playing football so cardio side of things was really dropped but despite that in 2017 so I would have been mid-20s at that point I decided to sign up for a half marathon as something to do for charity so signed up to the Glasgow half marathon and did a bit of training for it again it was all made up myself just kind of maybe looking online and going out some runs not a huge amount of structure to it but ended up doing that run in one hour 30 minutes just over one hour 30 minutes which is a pretty good half marathon time and despite not training for a long period of time before it not having done much running over the last few years prior to that I was really quite pleased with that time and was thinking at that point that there's maybe something to this I've maybe got maybe actually all right in this sport so I decided just because I built up my fitness to the half marathon level to then say right I'm going to try and do a marathon I don't know if I'm ever going to get to this fitness level again in terms of already being able to do a half marathon so why don't I sign up for a marathon in a few months time and see if I can continue doing it so I signed up for the Stirling marathon which was in the following April so almost exactly six months after the half marathon so kept my running up throughout that six months again just following my own training plan like there wasn't I wasn't getting help off anybody it was probably not the best plan in the world I didn't have a clue about fueling anything like that and it was just like yeah go out runs try and keep building my distance up each week and see how I get on so managed to do the Stirling marathon which was my first marathon in three hours 27 minutes it was absolutely horrendous to be honest and although it was a good time for a first marathon it was awful and the fullest I'd run in my training was 20 to 21 miles but I'd been training for running about a 7.30 minute mile which would have got me in around about the 3.18 mark which is pretty ambitious for a first marathon but as soon as the day came adrenaline excited it was a good day I ended up just going flying out and I was running at like 7.15 7.20 minute miles which is I did 10 15 seconds faster than planned but at the start of a marathon you're obviously going to feel good so kept going kept going once I hit mile 17 or 18 I hit the wall majorly also hadn't been fueling taking gels taking all I was doing was taking the odd sip of water and I hit the wall majorly my speed dropped to like well over eight minute miles the last 10k was honestly just trundling along felt horrendous and just due to how fast I'd went for the first part of it I did still manage to get under the 3.30 which was a good time again showing to myself that a huge amount of detail training no fueling and hitting the wall I still managed to get a decent enough time but at that point I was like I've done the marathon now I've ticked it off I've done a half marathon I've ticked it off I'm just back to the gym for me so it was back to the gym for another five years without any real running getting done I would do the odd 5k here and there potentially a 10k run but really really minimal and I know in the gym shut I probably did a bit more than usual but again not a lot I was then at that point just trying to get gym equipment for the garage running just like kind of fell away fell to the wayside and it wasn't until start of 2022 and I was starting to think like start to miss running a wee bit again I don't know if it was maybe after a marathon I'd seen or a half marathon I was like maybe I could maybe go for a running goal again and I just said right I'm just going to be ambitious and try and set a sub three marathon goal when's a reasonable time for me to achieve that and this was the February 2022 and the Loch Ness Marathon was October 2022 and I said I'm going to sign up for that try and get a sub three time and really push hard over the next wee while and see what I can do so that day literally when I signed up said I'm going to go out and run a 10k I hadn't run at all for the last few months and I was absolutely dying to get that 10k around 50 minutes and for me that I've run faster than that in the past but I was absolutely dying I just want to show you like how quickly you can progress so in that February I struggled to do a 10k 50 minutes because if you put that into perspective that's nowhere near a sub three marathon time especially having to do four 10ks in a row for a marathon so I was like right I don't know if that's just too ambitious but I went for it kept training building up my runs building up my pace and then got a proper structured plan with a coach started that a few months out and came in at a 3.03 for Loch Ness so that was a 25 minute PB almost and from those six months hardly have been able to run a 50 minute 10k to just missing out on a sub three marathon just shows you how quickly you can progress with running if you stick at it and just keep consistent and keep building upon it so I was obviously gutted just to miss out my sub three goal so then at that point I signed up straight away for the Manchester marathon which was in April this year and managed to run a 2.57 so absolutely delighted and over the last year since I signed up for that Loch Ness marathon so a year and a few months now like I've completely got the running bug it's like the buzz I get after going a good run tunes on feeling good definitely outweighs the buzz I get from my weight training session I do get a good buzz from it weight training sessions any form of exercise but nothing beats running for me and I've really caught the running bug now and you can see I've been a big part of my training like for life and but it's not always there it's not there immediately when I did that 10k just over a year ago when I just signed up like I did not have any sort of buzz during that that was awful so just a case of if you go out and run tomorrow if you've not run for a while it's not as if you're going to feel absolutely buzzing and feel like you're flying straight away it takes time like anything just to build up and build up but despite that I think everybody should try and sign up for a running event if they've never done one and I've got kind of five key reasons for that first one is it's for everyone and other events for everyone there's no real barriers to entry you just need to get a pair of running shoes and get out the door and you can practice it's not like you need loads of different equipment you don't need to be overly restrictive with what you're eating it's not like you're going to be doing a bodybuilding show or anything like that and it's also a lot of the time a lot more time efficient because you don't need to be getting your gym bag sorted driving to a gym doing a session like you could easily just go out run a 5k shoes on and back and you're back in half the time and obviously that depends on what you're training for and things but there is races and events that is going to be less time intensive so that's one of the main reasons the next one is goal setting and motivation a running event is one of the best things and easiest things to sign up for that you can have a date and a focus if you've not got a date or something you're working towards it can be really hard to maintain motivation it can be really hard for you to stick and be consistent with something so I think having an event that you're you know building up to can be really really helpful for in terms of setting goals and keeping that motivation and focus going third point is the sense of achievement that you get like the sense of achievement after completing a running event I can guarantee you will feel a buzz after that there's there's no denying it whether it's a 5k 10k half marathon marathon if you're doing ultra marathons whatever it is the sense of achievement and the buzz you get after it really is second to none and then a race day environment like the atmosphere experience is is unique if you're comparing it to your training runs going out yourself for a 10k run is difficult and it can be challenging you've not got that same buzz around you whereas the atmosphere and everything about a race day really just takes things up a notch and then just finally personal growth and challenge if you're setting yourself a challenge and making sure it's something that's beyond where you're at just now if you can say maybe you can run a 5k at the moment but that's as far as you can go set a 10k goal and then that's going to force you to embrace habits develop new routines that's now going to allow you to grow personally and physically and you're going to achieve that final goal and just having that personal growth and that challenge there is going to rub off in all other areas of your life it's not just all my running is going to improve because of the habits and everything that you need to implement to achieve that goal that you set then you're going to see positives in all areas and from your energy levels your mood work performance everything like that so those are the kind of key reasons for me in terms of signing up for a running event the progress project we're going to be aiming for big numbers at the glasgow half marathon in glasgow 10k and the 1st of october 2023 this year so really really excited for that that's my next main running event i do have a charity challenge in july that i'm doing and which i'm running 4.4 miles every four hours for 48 hours that's on thursday the 13th of july and that's going to work out at 52 miles over the two days so two marathons over the two days so little sleep little recovery so that's my next sort of running challenge but my next main event like race day event that i've been kind of talking about on this podcast is going to be the glasgow half marathon in the 1st of october which if you've never done that before it's a really good event really big crowds big numbers at it and i highly highly recommend if you are thinking about doing a running event also you get to train through july august it's nice weather enjoyable running you're not having to try and avoid ice and get soaked every time you go out so that's another big positive for it but yeah hopefully this podcast could give you a wee bit of background of how i went from just going out jogs to sub three marathon and how doing a running event they're going to have so many more positives than just getting better than running so if you've liked this podcast drop me a message give us some feedback on it and if you're listening to it screenshot it share it in your stories tag me in it and the more people we can get listening to these podcasts the better and so yeah episode three done and i'll speak to you guys on the next one