Steps Challenge Week 9

Day 57: Working from home today so did an easy 4 and half mile run after work. As I said in my last post I stripped out the hills and tried to make it as easy as possible. Hoping that i'll be able to get out tomorrow for a harder session. 10,623 steps.

Day 58: Well my tactic worked perfectly. My legs felt fine today and I was raring to go after work. I decided to go for one of my old sessions which is about a 0.3/0.4 mile rectangle.  Where I go fast the 2 short sides and one long side - then walk the other long side to recover. So it basically worked out as 2 minutes fast running followed by 2 minutes walking for recovery. I did this 10 times.  It felt good up until the last few reps and I was really pushing it. In total including warm up and warm down it came to just over 6 miles. Total steps for the day was 12,409.

Day 59: Easy day today so 59,394 steps.  Only joking - 10,612 really. :-)

Day 60:  Headed through to Livingston today to meet up with one of my work mates Andy.  We meet up for lunch in the office canteen and chat a about parkrun a lot so it was good to see what the Livingston parkrun was like and hangout.  Andy likes to start nearer the front and since going by our times we are about the same pace I joined him. For the first km he was running just in front of me until we reached a short, sharp hill. Then I overtook him and never saw him again until the finish.  I really liked the route. It does a wee loop, then goes out along the river, turning into a trail, then crosses a bridge and you go back down the other side of the river. Then you do half of the loop you did at the start. I would say its an undulating course.  All the hills seemed to be short and sharp and same with the descents.  I crossed the line in 26.11 which I was delighted with. Andy ended up getting a PB too in 27.14.  In the afternoon I went for a nice 4 1/2 mile walk to get up the step count a bit.  17,520 steps.

Day 61:  An easy day today. 6 and half mile walk round the southside of Glasgow.  15,608 steps all together.

Day 62: In the office today but one of my trains was running late so I got in later. I still walked from the station to the office on the way in but decided to get the bus on the way back so I could get my usual train home.  Once I was home though I did an excellent hill session on one of the toughest short hills in the area. I did it 10 times and was pretty consistent averaging around a minute per rep. Steps total for today was 18,864 steps.

Day 63: In the office again. Legs were stiff from yesterday so a well deserved recovery day.  So all walking - 12,748 steps.

Here are the stats for the week:

My average steps for week 8: 14,055
My overall average: 13,234

My team's average steps overall: 13,973
My team's ranking in our department mini league after week 8: 4th out of 8 - same as last week
My team's ranking across all companies competing in GCC after week 8: 9724 out of 48,444 -  Down 1,540  places on last week.

So still slipping down the leaderboard but again that is because people leave it a few weeks and then upload their steps all at once.

For me it has been my best week yet. 4 really good runs.  If I can get into a routine of doing this that would be amazing.