Keeping Up..

Unless running is your passion, it is hard to persuade yourself to lace up and run especially if you are required to run more than several kilometres. But everybody likes to register and participate in a running event once in a while just for the fun of it, not knowing the tremendous post-run pain and muscle soreness that they will suffer due to lack of training. I have friends who who came to work walking like a big sumo wrestler after her race day.

You see, your body needs to adapt to rigourous activities or injury will come easily and haunt you. I had a hard time coming back to running after a period of 5 weeks resting without any running activity whatsoever. It took me a while to get back to the same level of fitness that I had before. It's easy to give up and forget running altogether. But for a person who has more than 10 pairs of running shoes in the closet/storeroom, giving up the activity is a complete no-no. The polar running index in my M400 has been hovering around 34-38 for about 3 weeks before it went up to 42 last week. This gave me an increased confidence to run my first 10km without stopping for breath. To go beyond tempo run and do a proper speedwork at a proper distance. To make fartlek a common routine again.

At some stage the thought of having an ipod nano to keep me motivated throughout my usual weekend's LSD did cross my mind. But then I will be neglecting my focus on my breathing and cadence.

In the end, the thought of being able to run fast again, finally nailed it for me. It was the main reason I still run today, to beat other people's records/achievements, other than to stay healthy of course. It may sound so kiasu ehh.. hehe..

I created targets for myself to achieve with incremental progress. Another two years.. That's how long it will take, given my current work commitments.

Hopefully by then the popularity of this blog will also pick up.. hehe..