Run Home

Tuesday 17th March saw me complete one of the bigger tasks on The List. I say bigger, as it took considerable effort and some planning. And a year ago, or even 6 months ago, I would have thought even the idea was ludicrous!

I ran home.
Ran home from work.
The journey can take 1 hour 45 minutes by 2 buses. Or a train, another train, then either a long walk or a bus. Or anything between 30 minutes to 2 hours to drive, depending on the traffic.
The journey on foot is only 8.3 miles. (Only?!)

I started my running journey in May 2014, completing the first day of Couch to 5k on the 22nd May. This programme worked well for me, even though the first time I ran for 8 minutes without stopping I thought I would throw up! It made it (relatively) easy to actually start doing exercise, and the prospect of running for 25 mins in week 7 did seem far off, but when I got there it wasn't too difficult and completing the programme did come with a massive sense of achievement.
Since completing the final day in week 9 of the programme in June 2014, I have been going out regularly. Not all that far, but at least twice a week, and I earned a t-shirt and sense of pride by completing my first 10k race at the Cheshire 10k in November 2014. Gradually building up my distance when time allowed, but making sure I kept going out pounding the streets.

Tim has also caught the running bug. He also started the Couch to 5k programme last summer and has since done a half marathon. So to anyone wondering if Couch to 5k works, yes it does!
Tim came with me on the run home. Some of the areas that the route goes through are, well, I've seen nicer places. I thought, for the first time, I should have company.

Before I started writing this post, I did a bit of googling, and it seems there's a whole thing out there about the Run Commute, with articles in the Guardian and Telegraph. There's even a Run to Work Day. Who knew?! Running to work, now that's something different. There was enough to think about planning the run home. I needed to get the bus in, where could I store my stuff, what was the route, did I have enough flexi to take an hour off, so that we were still able to make the nursery run on time? All these issues and questions all resolved themselves and so last Tuesday was the day.

The run itself was better than I thought it would be. A lot of stop-starting in Manchester centre, but even by the time we got to Piccadilly, we were almost matching the time it takes to drive! There were a couple of occasions where I thought "what on earth am I doing", and we discovered that the whole route was pretty much uphill. But it was actually quite enjoyable, especially at the parts where were were moving faster than the traffic. I managed a bit of a spurt of energy at the end, which actually made me think that the next challenge on The List may not be too far off: Half marathon?