Beyond 10k....

So I had completed 10k in under an hour and was fairly comfortable at that distance, albeit slow - but fine for me. I then began to ponder what was next - "Ok Wardman - are you going to be happy ticking along at this distance and just work on improving your times, or...."
The 'or' won out, I have always enjoyed a challenge and wanted to progress further and the next logical step was a half marathon. I was still far from fit at this stage (and not there yet either) and had been following a fairly strict diet for a couple of months with an end result of 18kgs lost over 4 months or so of regular diet & exercise. I was really pleased with that result and feeling significantly better overall, both mentally & physically, but was still only halfway to where I needed to be weight wise. given that was the case, I figured long slow distance (LSD) was the key for me in terms of fat burning and continuing my journey to fitness.
A few others in our group were pondering 'what next?' also so we all got together at the pub one night (didn't need a lot of convincing to hold a meeting there!) and decided 'if it was going to be, it's up to me!/us!' to continue our progress and support each other in our goals. At the very least, we were all keen to get together for a social run each week and decided to keep in contact via email etc and put together a bit of a run schedule to help keep ourselves and the group on track.
We decided that we would continue to run from our normal venue, Souter Park at Goodwood, and stick to Saturday morning for those wishing to do longer runs (>10K), and Sunday mornings for those wishing to do shorter efforts or recover from the previous day (generally <8k). We also decided we would put a schedule together for the group each month for proposed runs and take turns being responsible for it so we could mix things up a bit and share the responsibility.
I also had put together a 14 week HM training program with Phil's help a couple of weeks prior and was working my way through that and got stuck into it in earnest at that point.