A new personal best!

I really suprised myself at parkrun on Saturday and beat my previous time of 27 minutes 37 seconds with a 2 minute 13 second personal best of 25 minutes 24 seconds! Woohoo! I am very pleased with this and am hoping to break 25 minutes next time I run at Newcastle parkrun, which will be on Saturday 12th March. We will be starting a new pacing system on this day, with times of 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, and 35 minutes being paced by volunteer runners. This is the perfect opportunity for runners to get a little bit more motivated and push themselves to achieve a certain time at parkrun, so why not come along and try it?

My marathon training is going well and I did a 10 mile run on Sunday, fast 800m repeats last night, and 7 miles this morning before work. I have a fairly easy week this week and will be doing a fast 2 miles tomorrow, 4 miles on saturday, and racing a 10k on sunday!

I read some scary stats in Mens Health magazine the other day....If the world keeps going the way it is going then by 2020 depression will be the second most disabling condition in the world and by 2050 over 50% of the UK population will be obese! Depression and obesity are both conditions that are able to be helped hugely with physical activity and exercise, and exercise is now known to be as effective, and longer lasting than the effects of antidepressants, with psychologist Tal Ben Shahar actually suggesting that, 'not exercising is like taking depressants'.

I am busy preparing lectures on the psychology of exercise, and also obesity, which is proving to be good reading. The benefits of exercise are so vast and yet exercise adherence is often hard to achieve. I love lecturing on subjects like these and believe if we can educate everybody as to the benfits of exercise then many of the lifestyle diseases mentioned above will be able to be more easily managed and the symptoms and effects dramatically reduced.

Great news that my friend Monica Harris has started training for this years Models Fight Night which she founded, competed in, and won last year. It proved to be a great night of entertainment and lots of money was raised for charity in the process. Check out http://www.modelsfightnight.co.uk/about-us.php for more information or to get involved!

Have a great day,

Niyc xx