I wasn’t sure where to start with my first blog post. It was tempting to go in chronological order but if I started with my history of running, stopping and running again I might never get up to date. So for the first post I decided to jump right in at the present (December 2015) then go back and fill in the blanks later. Years ago I read a quote something like “anything which gets measured and analysed, improves”. As I had been doing regular weekly parkruns, I had collected a list of times achieved over the standard 5k parkrun distance which I could analyse in graphical format, and then use to set future targets. So that is what I did. The first graph below shows the improvement in my times over the course of 22 parkruns so far, from over 28 minutes to under 22 minutes, and the second graph shows the improvement in my finishing position from in the 80s to a recent 12th place. I can now easily record and review progress on a weekly basis and the trends in the graphs give me a lot of confidence for making further improvements in the months to come.

(The high point in August 2015 was recorded when I had a sore hamstring after attempting to run too fast in a training session.  Luckily I was still able to continue with daily running, just more slowly than normal until the issue cleared up.)

My name is Allen Marr. At the end of April 2015 at the age of 59 years I gave up full-time work as a deskbound IT consultant. Although I had a reasonably active lifestyle outside of work as a regular at the gym, an occasional jogger and a hill-walker, I had felt for some time that my mental and physical health was declining and I had just recovered from a debilitating 3 month bout of flu. Fundamentally I wanted to do “something different” with my life (and I will elaborate on what that something is in future blog posts). It was apparent to me that fitness was key to my plans and from my experience and knowledge of running as a much younger man (again about which there will be more in the blog) running is an effective and free way to improve fitness so it was an obvious choice for me. One of my first actions after leaving the world of work, and one of the best decisions I have ever made, was to join my local running group. I also decided that I needed some rules to guide me in my running activity and I settled on the following as my Primary Rules of Running. I have a number of secondary rules as well (more on these later) but they all relate to the primary rules.

Primary rule 1: Don’t get injured

Primary rule 2: Run every day

Although this blog is mainly about running, I will also delve into how the practice of running helps me in other aspects of life, which after all is the reason I chose to start running in retirement in the first place.

Thanks for reading.

Allen