I am going to run the Paris half-marathon on the 2nd March 2008. I’ve never run that sort of distance before, certainly not outdoors, my lengthiest runs being circuits of Hyde Park, Green Park and St. James’ Park in London when I still lived there – that adds up to about 10 kilometres per run, and I seem to recall needing a short break in the middle. This little journal is expected to cover the intervening 110 days between today (12th November 2007) and the race day (2nd March 2008). Whether it becomes diary of achievement or a chronicle of pain remains to be seen.

I’m 33 years old, and I’m in fairly good shape, although definitely not the kind of shape where running a half-marathon is something I could do with ease.

I’m hoping to get a decent time, because I don’t see the point in undertaking a project like this unless you intend to do well at it. I’ve yet to decide what a “decent time” really means. If I’m honest, the main challenges are going to be discipline (I’m not very good at making the time for running, and this is not the first time I’ve formulated good intentions of this kind) and injuries, as I’ve had a mild case of Plantar Fasciitis that resurfaces every time I go for a run, and my left knee hurts after exercise – I don’t think either of these issues is particularly major and I hope they don’t get in the way of my training.

I went for a run with a friend this Saturday. We didn’t run very fast and we didn’t run very far (6.5 km), but the nice thing was that I felt very well immediately afterwards, and I’m hoping I can build on that. It was a very pleasant run along the banks of the Seine in Paris. I’ll be including links to the runs I do on gmap-pedometer.com, Saturday’s run is here.

I’ll also keep track of my body. The overall goal is to improve my health, and so hopefully I’ll be able to see and measure that improvement. At the moment, I weigh 72kg, and my fancy but temperamental body-fat monitoring scales in my bathroom give me a body fat percentage of somewhere between 16% and 17.5% depending on the day. My BMI is 22.7.