The Beginning

A little over a year ago I got sick and tired of being out of shape and started running . I found it easiest when I was away on business trips (there are/were lots of them). No worries about balancing family andrunning, always some free time to do it and it's a good way to say 'sorry, not going to the hotel bar immediately after work today and staying until it closes I'm going for a run instead'.
It was easy to stay focused especially on trips alone. I had some 'interesting experiences' (Running on a treadmill at a hotel in Virginia Beach because there was a lightning storm, then having the power surge crash-stop the treadmill under my feet...don't recommend that one) but mostly it's been very enjoyable.
And the results have been good as well. In addition to feeling better about myself, I've probably lost in the neighborhood of 20-25 pounds (10 kg or a stone and a half depending on your units of choice).

Over the past year I've been lucky enough to have some good co-workers. In addition to be good to work with, there has been a small group of us who will run during our lunch breaks. This solved my 'family vs running' problem. Since I haven't started training for any marathons or long runs, I've been satisfied with running during the work week then getting exercise on the weekend through other means (walking, playing with my son...).

I have now reached a difficult spot. Most of the co-workers I run with have left and I'll be following them soon. The trouble will be to maintain momentum and continue to run once the peer pressure of "going running today?" disappears. I've tried the training log and it worked for a while. The problem was updating it from various locations when the log was on a laptop that I use predominantly for travel. I guess I could go for the paper training log option, but that seemed so 20th century. So we'll try this and a few other things:

I ran my first organized road race in 11 years this past week (as evidenced from the picture) The Fourth of July Portsmouth Athletic Club Promenade Series 5K. I'm planning on running in the Great Capital Run (10K) in London next weekend (foot pain allowing). Now, after we move, if I can just keep this up, maybe it will work...