A little less than 4 years ago I moved to London and was inspired by all my healthy and sporty colleagues to start running. Up to that point I had never loved, or even liked to run.
As a kid I would often be the slowest runner of all of the girls and I found the school system horrible: you would get marks for how far you could run in a certain period of time. I remember giving everything and still ending up with 5 or 6 out of 10. A horrible experience for me. And then one day the sports teacher brought in heart monitors, but didn't change the system, so when it turned out that I had to run even slower in order not to force my body, I would have failed the test...
I went through my university years without almost any running at all. Without any sports actually. Whereas up to my 18th I loved ballet, jazz dance, anything about dancing, during those university years, the combination of studying and partying seemed to be perfect. Who needs sports anyway? Luckily I walked and biked a lot, so still maintained some sort of shape...
I did sometimes try to go running but I would be exhausted after 15 minutes, losing my breath and just being very frustrated about the whole experience.
And then, almost 4 years ago, 3 elements came together:
- my Belgian colleagues gave me an ipod shuffle as leaving gift before I moved to the UK
- my new English colleagues all seemed to be so fit and sporty
- AND, most importantly, I downloaded the START TO RUN series [Dutch] http://www.start-to-run.be
And with those 3 elements, all I needed to do was committing to going running 3 times a week. The series made me go from 0 to 5k without a lot of problems. I learned how to breathe in the right way, how to run for 2, then 5, 10, 20, and finally 30 minutes without stopping...
I did my first run, the 6k Santa run in London. And I made it :) I felt pretty weak afterwards though and it took me 9 months until my next run: I had moved to Paris and after a long break without running, redid the 0-5k and then ran La Parisienne, a 6k female-only race along the Seine!
So now I could run 5k, but how to keep going and progress to another level?
Enter 2 additional elements:
- my parents noticed how much I seemed to love running (much to their surprise) and bought me a heart rate monitor for Christmas. HIGHLY recommended: I noticed I still ran too quickly in order to be able to run for longer periods of time. Slow down and you'll run a lot longer, feeling better
- I signed up for a 10k on my 27th birthday, to make myself proud on a special day
And off I went, now with the KEEP RUNNING series, which takes you from 5-10k with 3 training sessions a week: a short run, an interval session and a long distance run. This series is a lot harder and it took me a lot longer to get to the end of it. But, on my 27th birthday, I ran 10k, in 1h and 7 minutes. The girl who was horrible at running ran 10k and actually enjoyed the entire race. Plus it got me a very flashy yellow t-shirt, which I love.
So then I moved to Cincinnati and it seems to be all about running here: people get up before 6 to go and do their daily run (really...) and before I knew I signed myself up for a 15k. Random factors in the sign-up process were that it was the same price as the 5k and that they didn't offer a 10k... On top of that, doing 15k would allow me to start with my husband, who would run his 4th half marathon...
So I decided to go for it and essentially just followed the same model as the Keep Running series: 3 runs a week, with the long distance run being between 10 and 15k.
And today, I did it, I ran 15k and enjoyed it so much. It felt so good being able to run, not having to walk, beating those hills.
Do I run fast? No
Was I surrounded by walkers for most of the time? Yes
Did I looked very red for most of the race? Yes
Was I smiling? Yes, all the time, because I knew how proud I could be of myself. Yes, because I ran at my own speed, checking my heartbeat. Yes, because today I ran 15k!
So what's next?
- Rat Race 10k in April
- Flying Pig 10k in May
- and then... building up to 21k? Why not? If I have learned one thing from running it is that when you set a crazy objective and train in the right way, there's a big chance you may actually meet that objective and be prouder of yourself than you ever thought was possible!
So just try it!
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