Regents Park

Here's how it was supposed to be:

Scoot down to Regents Park, have a glorious time running around one of London's greenest areas, taking in the boating lake, the zoo and the gardens, all the while marveling at what a wonderful city we live in.

Here's how it was: For the first time in ages, I had to take walking breaks, I didn't even break the 4km line and I felt like I was going to die. I'm blaming it on dehydration.

Not the idyllic run I was anticipating.

Hardcore

It turns out nothing improves your pace quite as much as running in torrential rain, terrified you're going to screw up either your iPhone or your headphones with water damage.

It also turns out there's nothing quite as annoying as Nike+ failing to record the last km, making it look in that all important profile, that you weren't half as impressive as you know you actually were.

Still, I quite liked running in the rain. It focused the mind. I made sure to give passers by plenty of rueful looks, which hopefully conveyed to them that when I left the house it was totally dry.

Also, I finished feeling extra smug.

Oh god, what have I done?

Promised to do the Brighton Half Marathon, that's what.

Whilst I haven't got as far as signing up, I have every intention of doing so. After all, there's no conceivable reason why I can't do it - I proved I could go from a couch to a 5k, and it's only over four times 5k (21.0957k, in fact) which theoretically is about two hours of running. And I've got two legs, which I think is one of the only prerequisites. Although, honestly, I'd rather have these.

In true Starter None Finisher style, I've joined a couple of running sites, googled 'things to hold your keys whilst running' and decided which training plan I'm going to follow. Now all I need to do is do two medium runs during the week, and one long one at the weekend. Every week. A side effect of that is that I'm going to have to not drink the night before, which, quite honestly, is one of the biggest attractions. I know myself well enough to know I can do these things if I have an aim.

This time, I'm going to figure out a way to run places other than my 5k route - I want to tick off the following:

Hyde Park

Regents Park

Regents Canal

Southbank

Some more of these

I've also decided I need to be up and at 'em at 7.30am every morning, and it's going to have to be even earlier in the summer when it's hot.