Running blog: How was your weekend running?

As spring starts to show signs that it might just be emerging, it’s time to dust off those trainers because you don’t have the excuse that it’s freezing anymore. Well maybe you do. But like a bulb bursting out in a riot of colour, the inner runner in me is back and ready to do this.

It’s not that I haven’t been pounding the streets through the winter but there is something about this time of year, rather than January, when running really gets going. Perhaps it’s the proliferation of marathoners starting to up their game. Or those gym subscription resolutions finally broken as running from your front door becomes the easier option. And as the cross country season winds down, the mud-inclined are back on the roads and towpaths once again.

Yet feeling like you have come out of hibernation makes spring exercise hard for the majority. And personally I need more of an incentive than simply viewing the daffodils to get my trainers on. That’s why I have signed up for the Vitality Run Hackney Half Marathon on 10 May.

Returning after a successful first year, it promises to be bigger and better, with a route that includes the Olympic Park and an earlier date after 2014’s scorcher. I have been running around this London borough for a long time (both for fitness purposes and not), and am hoping that familiar sites, not least the stunning Hackney Marshes, will buoy me along. As will the fact that my best friends, including one who will be doing her first half, are taking part too. If that can’t motivate me, I don’t know what will.

So what have you signed up for in 2015? How far ahead do you like to plan your races? And were there green shoots on your run this weekend?

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