Cannot believe that it is the best part of a month since I last posted a blog, where does the time go? In this post I want to talk a bit about setting personal challenges and continuous improvement.

Pushing the boundaries…

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that over the past year or so I have set myself some personal challenges associated with running. As a kid and even into my adult years I have never been a fan of running and ofter went out of my way to avoid it at all costs. However, I felt I needed to do something to improve my health and fitness a couple of years ago and decided to do a bit of jogging.

To give myself something to aim for I entered the Birmingham Half Marathon last October and successfully completed it. During the time I was training for the half marathon, I had to continually up my game, run more miles every week and my long run increased in length regularly. Subsequently, I was chosed to participate in the 2011 Virgin London Marathon; another big step forward. I wrote just over a month ago about kicking off my training and the reasons why I was running the marathon, Let the fun begin….

Yesterday marked a new personal milestone for me, I ran the furthest distance I have ever run – 14 miles. Not bad for someone who hated running, who before last year had never ventured beyond 6. However, it doesn’t stop there… soon, as part of my training I will be running 16, 18 and 20 miles and then on April 17th 2011 the big one itself…26.2 miles

All very interesting you might say, however, I would like to bring out the ‘moral’ behind the story. Setting yourself ‘stretchy’ goals (run the London Marathon), having a plan of how you are going to achieve them (training plan), having the desire and motivation to achieve them can lead to you breaking through boundaries and achieving things that perhaps you thought were beyond your reach. It also really helps to tell other people what you want to do and build up some ‘social contracts’; I would like to thank all of those around me, via this blog, Twitter, Facebook, at work etc for all of their help, encouragement and support. If you’d have asked me 2 or 3 years ago if I could run a half marathon, let alone a marathon, I would of laughed my socks off… but here we are, I’ve done one and I am confident that on Sunday April 17th 2011 I will complete the London Marathon.

Now you may not want to run a marathon, but the same approach can be applied to whatever you want to achieve.

Pushing the boundaries