After this weekend’s disappointing running, I needed a gentle day to deal with the consequences of running whilst feeling ill, most of which manifested in stiff muscles – the extended run yesterday resulted in an aborting stretching session. So this morning’s wake-up call saw me 15 minutes of gentle stretching. I’ve blogged before about how tough I find it to embrace a stretching routine of any kind, so hoping people don’t see this as a cop-out… I know, it’s not the most impressive start to a month of daily exercise but – it was necessary, and I wanted to give myself another day to recover from the weekends stresses. More running / cycling excitement will kick off over the next few days, I promise.

I have a personal target to beat (as tracked by Runkeeper) – which is to exceed the 98 miles I ran and cycled in May – a substantial challenge given that last month saw me run the half-marathon distance twice (for the first time in my life), as well as a 10-miler and *many* 10k training runs.

16 or so weeks to the New Forest Half-Marathon. And a lot of work to do…

Update: As the day wore on the morning session of stretching as my first day of Juneathon action seemed inadequate, so I’ve reinstated the push-ups and sit-ups (at least today), with 30 and 60 of each respectively. Nowhere near the giddy heights I was achieving last year when I attempted (and failed) the 100 push-up challenge, but hey, it’s exercise. We’ll see how it goes as the month progresses.