Currently 14 days and 17 hours since last smoke @ bedtime on New Years day. My main motivation for quitting was to see an improvement in my running times, which is a bit silly but whatever works for you.
I've been running for 6-9 months or so on an off. Up till November my quickest times were 24:30 for 5k and 51:30 for 10k. I didn't run at all in December and gave up on 2nd of Jan.
Since then I have run
5k - 23:45 in a like for like situation (around parks) and 22:37 in my first ever 5k race.
10k - 49:57 in like for like situation.
I'm sure some of this can be explained by other factors (not sure what) but most of it is down to quitting smoking I believe.
One point I wanted to make was when you quit there is a difference between "thinking about smoking" and "craving smoking" when I quit for the first few days would say I thought about it every 10 minutes or so and craved it every hour. I now reckon I think about it every hour and crave it maybe twice a day. When something governs your life for so long it takes time to let it go.
After mocking you the other day I should confess that a couple of weeks ago I did a session of Bikram Yoga (Yoga in a hot room for those not in the know). Whilst I can't be sure of the benefits, one I defo can vouch for is that i had the best sh1t I'd had in months.
Hi David - you shouldn't be running flat out when you increase the distance.
Run you 6k slower than you would your 4k. If each of these sessions you push yourself to the max then you will find it harder to motivate yourself to go out and find it a struggle.
When I first started running six months ago I just did 5ks 2-3 times a week as quick as possible and shaved off 10 second here and there to get down from 27 to 24.30
Not i do longer running sessions and a couple of week ago ran a 15k and all 5k's were in about 25 and a bit...which I count as progress. Sure I have my ups and downs but I feel much better going out for a an easy hour of running than when I used to hammer a 5k every run and feel I wasn't making any progress.
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jamierunner
