Run 100: Intro

Fri 18 Sep 2020

Hi, I’m Dan. 👋

This is me celebrating my first half marathon in March this year. Shortly after this the national COVID-19 lockdown was announced, meaning organised runs would be impossible. I decided to try and improve my 5km PB, but didn’t get very far with it. So I thought to myself, if I can’t improve my speed how about improving my stamina?

So here’s the challenge: run 100km in the next month. This is partly inspired by my brother, who a couple of years ago ran 75 miles in a month to raise money for the Fire Fighters Charity. I tend to measure my runs in km, and in a good month I might run 60km, so 100km seems like a sufficiently large round number to aim for!

Often these sorts of challenges are accompanied by fundraising. I’d be lying if I said this was all about charity (frankly this is a personal challenge) but it also seems like a good opportunity to support a good cause. Given how much life is being affected by the global coronavirus pandemic at the moment, it only seems appropriate to support the NHS Charities Together COVID-19 appeal. I’ll be donating and I’d love it if you could join me.

Starting on 19 September is a little unorthodox for a month-long challenge, but I had a holiday earlier in the month and wanted to get started soon after. Starting on a Saturday also gives me five weekends!

Here’s my rough plan:

• An 8km run each weekend.
• Three 5km runs each week.

There will be a little flexibility in this (for example I’d like to extend one of my long runs to 10km) but this at least gives me confidence that it is achievable.

I’ll use this blog to document my progress as I go. See you in a month’s time!