365 Miles Challenge – Six Months Update

Last week marked six months since I started the 365 Miles in 365 Days Challenge. So I thought it would this would be a good time to write a post explaining my progress, share my highlights as well as low points which I have experience in the last six months.

Firstly, I would like to say I am completely overwhelmed by the support I have been receiving from the public. So many of you have shown an interest in what I am doing for the Children’s Society, and I am so thankful and grateful for that.

I can only assume many of you might be wondering how am I doing? Have I ran at least one mile every single day? Has this been an easy challenge? Well I can tell you now… If there is one thing that this challenge has been, it’s definitely been far from easy. I never thought it would be this challenging, yet so rewarding physically and mentally. Having to fit these runs in between my daily life, travel, work, hobbies and social life has been challenging on many occasions. I have learned that I have to be a lot more organised! I now try to pre-organise myself every evening for the next day and decide when I can fit in a run – whether it’s in the morning before work, after work, or even late evenings.

Looking back to the first month of this challenge, it was very hard. I found it challenging to motivate myself to run in the dark, cold and wet winter months. However, as the time went on, I began to really enjoy escaping my own thoughts for a while whilst running. I also noticed I began to run a lot faster as well as kept up consistent breathing throughout my runs. My first ‘record’ was in March when I ran a mile in 8 minutes and 6 seconds, then a month later I managed to beat this time, where I ran a mile in 7 minutes 33 seconds. I admit these times aren’t anything special (I’m aware of that and own up to this), but for me this is rewarding, as I have pushed myself very hard to be able to get as far this.

Here is my monthly breakdown of my runs in in miles in the last six months:

January = 31.3 miles

February = 29.1 miles

March = 34.1 miles

April = 30.0 miles

May = 31.1 miles

June = 30.0 miles

I wanted to make these miles as fun as I could, so I have taken part in many runs in the last six months such as Where’s Wally, Colour Obstacle Rush, Superhero, and Vitality Westminster Mile.

So… it sounds like it has been going all well and ‘easy’, right? Well that is far from true. Having been really ill and on antibiotics in February really took a toll on me. The medicine made me feel very nauseous which made hard for me to run. My second knock down was at the end of May after completing the Colour Obstacle Rush and Vitality Westminster Mile in one weekend, which caused many meniscal tears and awful knee pains. At first I thought I could just suck it up, and do slow jogs and my knees would fix themselves in the space of few weeks, but I was very wrong. By continuing to run, I damaged the cartilages even more, which made it almost impossible for me to run throughout June. Since then I have been seeing a physiotherapist and been strongly advised not to push myself. This is something I have to take seriously in order to prevent myself from further injuries.

This definitely has not been an easy ride, but I have had reoccurring support by many organisations such as Swindon Advertiser (Read post here), which I am very grateful for. I am determined to finish this and raise my target for the Children’s Society.

If you would like to support me and help me towards my target then please donate via my JustGiving page.

If you’re living in the UK, you can also donate by texting “ANAS95 with the donation amount e.g. £2″ to 70070 – There is no additional cost for donating via text!

Visit my Facebook page to stay up to date with all my runs.

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