There are sometimes weeks which drag on seemingly forever, each day a lifetime of its own and sometimes there are weeks where you’re simply unaware of time passing, such is the frantic pace of events. The week just gone was one of the latter.

Between commitments for work, family and friends and on-going personal projects like the LFR web-site launch, this week went really quickly and if it wasn’t for having club night in the middle of it, where I am sort of obliged to be at club I am not sure when I would have run. That’s the great thing about club night, its in the diary and you can attend on autopilot, get a decent run, whereas I am sure that otherwise I would not have run otherwise. Anyway, the point is that sometimes its really hard to find time to fit in a run, the endless list of things to do sometimes takes priority and sometimes there are genuinely more important things to do than go running (Note: need to check if that’s actually true)

One of the things that took a lot of time this week was launching the new LFR website, every day inching nearer but not quite there. Run? Damn…A few pages to tweak…no time. This was the theme of the last few weeks. Until Sunday, that is, when I spoke to one of the guys from the club and arranged to meet to do the club 5k route. The logic is unbelievably simple. When struggling to fit a run in, put something in the diary that you’ve committed to – like meeting up with someone for a run. Then, you’ve made a commitment and are less likely to find things to do instead. So I ran the club 5k at sort of 6’45 pace, chatted most of the way round, got back to the car and it really is easy to see why people like running. It’s a great way to literally run off stress.

Looking back at the week its fairly easy to see how some people can fall out of running. The pace of life, and the demands of work, family and friends can often leave little room and fitting in running can be a struggle. A week can easily turn into 2 or 3 or more and then you face other battles, like recovering the fitness. This can present you with another challenge too, sometimes people tell themselves that they can’t run because they’re not fit enough anymore, and so the cycle starts to self-perpetuate.

So if there’s one thing learned this week its to put more ‘committed’ runs in the diary, runs that are harder to get out of, that is. Of course, if every run was pre-booked in this way it would be no fun at all either, so there’s clearly some balance to strike, but I am pretty sure this is the way to go in order to prevent falling out of running when life throws everything at you all at once.