Running for Retrak: Week 2

So, my training for the Brussels 20km in aid of Retrak has started in earnest. A week in, with the encouragement-slash-nagging of a training app on my phone – it greets me with a disappointed ‘sad face’ icon when I have to delay a run by 24 hours – it seems I’ve spent a little under two hours sweating, covered 22km and burned a whopping 1,400 calories (or, as I prefer to think of it, a large Big Mac meal, more or less, in all its disgusting glory).

This week I’ve also discovered the benefits of training alongside a buddy or two, rather than plugging in the headphones and blocking out the pain with a spot of circa-2006 soft rock. Fellow slow-coach Katie and I made an early start at a misty Parc Royal on Sunday – as did much of Brussels, or so it seemed, as Lycra-clad athletes and their dogs sped past us time and again. Turns out it’s far from a solitary occupation, this running lark. (Katie’s charity of choice, incidentally, is the excellent Serve the City, which does great work in Brussels and elsewhere.)

With an hour on the climbing wall and a boxing session thrown in too this week, it’s fair to say I’m in agony. It’s mitigated, though, by a vague sense of achievement and a desire to keep pushing myself. And now that app is on at me again, telling me it’s time for what it calls an ‘easy’ run. I’ll be the judge of that, thanks very much.

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Follow my progress - catch up with previous blog entries: Week 1