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Follow the whole nine yards here (a 95 part series) :- Half Marathon Blog

Why I am running:- West Coast Eisteddfod Bryn Seion Church

For details of how to sponsor see this post

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Well....I ran for 15 minutes again today and I was a lot more comfortable with it than last time. Also I have found a new training circuit which is ideal for my purposes. Basically I am running laps around some community gardens down the road from where we live. There is almost never anyone present when I run and the repetitive nature of the circuits suit my training style just fine. Running once around the turnips takes about 3 minutes so all I have to do is keep upping the number of laps and multiply by three to chart my progress.

That's the good news The bad news is that I have not completely given up smoking yet and I am having a very hard time doing so. I read the following on the way2quit.com website: -

• Smokers need to work harder than non-smokers doing the same activity. That means you cannot train as long as you might want when smoking. Also, your quality of training may suffer.
• Smoking has an immediate effect on respiration by increasing airway resistance and therefore reducing the amount of oxygen absorbed into the blood.
• Smokers produce more phlegm and are more likely to develop a chronic cough than non-smokers. As phlegm builds up in the airways it make breathing
  more difficult.

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I am well aware that continued smoking will slow me down and may utterly defeat my purpose in the long run. Does anyone have any advice to offer on removing this obstacle? Would electronic cigarettes help? Seems likely that they would not affect performance anywhere near as much, if at all.

Meanwhile just to end on an upbeat note...we have confirmed the venue for the West Coast Eisteddfod ( one of the causes I am running for ) and paid the refundable deposit. You can find out more about that over on Gaabi's blog here . Look out for many more exciting announcements in the weeks and months to come.

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