Catching up: Running

You know what I haven't done in a while? Even less than not keeping up with this blog? I haven't mentioned anything about life. True, I'm all over social media and if you're careful enough, eventually you find your way here from there (i.e.: Twitter, or maybe Facebook, or even the occasional enthusiast forum).

But I've been real quiet about non-enthusiast topics for a while mostly because... I kind of developed a social life. Kind of. Not that a lot changed, but there were times when I started to wonder if it was better to distance my on-line persona from real-life and vice-versa (this feeling started a few years back when one of my friends correctly identified someone else I usually used an alias for). From that point on, I tended to avoid mentioning real-life unless it was something unrelated to my regular readers (if I had any regular readers left).

Then I decided it wasn't so bad as long as I wouldn't write about people I frequently spent time with. So I will instead tell you about everything else that's happened to me this past year or so.

Partially inspired by a long-time reader (and also partially inspired by the desire to spite someone I know in real-life by proving I was as good as or better than them), I took up running. And I mean I took up serious training. I spent a few months last summer "running" but not making much headway. I just couldn't get past maintaining my speed and strength more than a few minutes at a time despite having read about interval training. In my tiny world, I felt like 5km was an admirable distance but damn near impossible. And frequently I wound up going about 2km or so and often taking nearly half an hour to do just that. In reality, I admit I was actually walking most of it.

In fact, let me rewind about 8 years... back to the day of eBloggy: I was a walker. I lived near downtown and spent my weekends walking across the provincial bridge for shopping and whatnot, often covering 5km easily. In fact, I conceivably covered 10km without even realizing it back then.

So when I decided one lazy Sunday to get up off my couch and walk 10km, I knew it could be done, but I also knew I wouldn't be doing it fast.

And after months of frustration, I took a chance and walked into my local Running Room store and signed up for my first clinic. I recounted my story about going 10km to the manager forgetting to mention that I actually walked most of it. Thankfully I chose the smarter option and signed up for the 5K clinic instead of the 10K. And that was one of the best decisions I ever made for a variety of reasons.

1) Because I ran semi-regularly, I was already more or less able to "run" 5 minutes at a time. I would learn that it wasn't so much the intensity of my work-out that was holding me back, but the consistency. Before I knew it, I was hooked on the 10:1 run/walk technique.

2) Timing was perfect because the instructor for that particular round happened to be a seasoned fitness instructor by trade rather than a random volunteer. She had loads organizational skills and ran the class like a drill instructor but also like a friendly kindergarten teacher at the same time.

3) Up to that point, one of my ongoing concerns was that I felt the obligation to "go home" on a regular basis. I didn't feel I had any right to commit to a weekly activity that would interfere with opportunities to be with family. Committing to this has freed my stress-levels incredibly. And on a side note, my parents were okay with this.

4) Up to this point, I was still rather embarrassed about my fitness level. I would talk about attempting my runs, but I refused to talk about how fast I was and avoided running with others, even making up excuses like, "you wouldn't want to smell me when I'm sweaty." This excuse later turned into fact, by the way.

I graduated the clinic and ran my first 5K race in March, clocking in at about 36 minutes. Which, if I took my before-clinic times into consideration meant I had cut almost 15 minutes off my best time. I enjoyed running with a group so much, I volunteered to be a group leader.

This is where things get a little bit weird for me. I loved group-leading. It was very rewarding to nurture other runners through the same experience I had by blowing away their doubts about their capacity for improvement. Telling them they ran so much farther than they thought and watching their smiles was a great feeling. But at the same time, I wasn't getting any faster or stronger. I spent the whole 10-week program running as slow as the slowest runners to make sure no one was left behind.

Come May, I ran the 5K at Ottawa Race Weekend and clocked 36 minutes again. As expected. Then things took a very unusual turn.

I took a few weeks off around this time. I went out of town - even tried to continue working out while away. But then one dreadful afternoon, a phone-call came. And it was possible the worst kind of phone-call one could receive: my grandfather was in a bad way.

Without getting into details, my extended family and I packed up and headed home to say our goodbyes.

When I got back to Ottawa, I threw myself in the training again. It was the only thing holding my nerves together and taking my mind off everything else. I ran so hard I wound up following the 10K clinic unofficially. I got along with them and was continually invited to join them on their clinic nights so I had my full 3-times-a-week schedule, following their hill-training through to the long-slow-distance runs on Sunday mornings. Before I knew it - the clinic was over. But due to weird timing, goal race for the group was actually 3 weeks away. I rallied the regulars and persuaded them to continue meeting me at the store to keep up our base training until the end.

In between last winter and now, I've lost about 18 pounds. I cut almost all junk food from my diet. I've continued to train 3 times a week (unless I was recovering after a race; or something came up). I stopped "midnight-snacking." I ran my first 10K race on August 21 clocking 1 hour and 8 minutes.Now I have plans to join the half-marathon group in September. There's no looking back now.