Spring is almost here

I love this time of year for running. Everything starts to take on a new colour and it becomes both lighter and warmer in the morning.
I've always been a morning runner, I find it starts off the day in the right way. It's quieter and gives me a chance to get my head right before going to work. My absolute favourite run is an early morning long run on a Sunday. When I trained for the Brighton marathon last year I had to regularly run 19, 20 and 22 miles. From where I live this meant that I was able to run into central London and past all the tourist spots. On a Sunday morning there would hardly be anyone around and it was a bit like that scene at the start of 28 Days Later where the guy is just wandering aimlessly across the Thames. I would run through Hyde Park, down past Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament, across the Thames, past the London Eye and back again via the Royal Albert Hall. I'd be back in the house by 9am when most "normal" people were just about getting up. I can't wait until marathon training starts again later this year so I can do some of my favourite routes that take me further afield than the local area.
That is one of the joys I get from running. Finding new routes. I've managed to discover pretty much all the canal paths, parks and general trails around where I live. I spend hours on mapmyrun.com just trying to find a new area that I've never explored before. The great thing about such sites as mapmyrun is seeing routes defined by other people that you've never thought of doing. Maybe I'm just sad!!
Anyway, back to how my "barefoot" running is going. I've increased the run part of the run/walk schedule to 1 minute of running. I have noticed that my calfs and ankles are doing a bit more work as well as the arches and balls of my feet. I'm presuming this is all to be expected as the muscles strengthen. Two more runs later this week on Wednesday and Friday. On the 5th June there's a 10k at Clapham Common so I think I'll enter that as it occurs just at the end of this training schedule. That will then give me two weeks before my marathon training starts.
Here's my first training run of the week:



I'm thinking of taking a camera on my training runs so I can take pictures as I go around and post them on here. Will have to find a decent camera that is lightweight and can take a bit of a battering should I drop it (which I will). Any suggestions welcome!