Just finished reading (on my Kindle) a really inspiring book. "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall is a great story about ultra-marathon running, the Tarahumara people of Mexico who are known for their distance running and about the humans and running in general.

It had been about a month since I started running and I was beginning to get some pains around my ankles and knees. I wear a good pair of running shoes so I guessed it must have been one of two things stopping me.

Either I was going too hard too soon and should back off a little or possibly I needed to look at my running style. So I took a couple of days break from running and thought I'd look on the web to see if there was anything about running styles.

This is a course that I do quite regularly as it's just over 3 miles.

The course starts of with a long downhil descent which gets steeper and steeper until I feel like I'm going to start tumbling.

Once at the river is pretty flat until the last half mile which steadily increases up until I cross the river again.

Then it's a long hard slog up the A690 and then another long hard slog up Gilesgate. Phew!

Ok, I've started running, so it's only fair that I should be allowed to buy myself a toy isn't it?

I've bought myself a Garmin Forerunner 305 watch thingy-ma-jiggy which comes with GPS, heart-rate monitor, training sessions, bicycle modes, you name it. Much to my dad's delight I still have not found the feature for telling the time! Anyway, it's not a watch and who cares what time it is when you're dying on a hill.

I am pretty happy with the 305. It's a chunky monkey but pretty light and you don't notice it there when you're running.