Running Journey Thoughts #3

So I stopped doing these exercise so much and switched to swimming. I made up a plan for myself and it was freestyle 4x25m, then without arm 4x25m, then without leg 4x25m and then back stroke 2x25m. Increasing the reps as I improve my endurance. 

However, money was a bit of a problem back then, I was an oversea students so I had no loans, my parents paid for everything and even though I had a part time job it did not allow me to live lavishly, or that I did not feel right to. So at one point, I reduced my membership to only swimming. This is when I started running. I lived extremely close to Hyde Park, and it would be silly not to take advantage of this beautiful running location. So I went into Nike Town, bought a pair of cheap running shoes on sale. This is how I started my running journey.

I had such a provisional way of calculating my mileage. I go by how many songs I have listened to on my iPod, and then calculating my distance by inputting my route onto Google Map. I have a general idea. After a few months running like this, I took part in my first 10k. It was the After Adoption 10k in Hyde park. Two laps of it starting from near the Gazebo, and ending there. The exact route I can't really remember. It was a very last minute entry and I had no idea what to expect. It wasn't hard but it did not go great, in my opinion. I had stitches, I started off too fast, I pushed on but it was the part of the park that I haven't really ran in. I think my time was 51 minutes and some seconds. When my mum came to me with a banana and water in hand, all I could do was huffed and puffed and got extremely self critical. How could I have done 10k in 51 minutes. I thought I would go home with a good 48-49 minutes. I was running at a pace like that in my practice runs (or so I thought). What went wrong?

After my first race and receiving my first running medal, I went back to Nike and this time, purchased one of those clever Nike+ device which you put in your shoes. I still don't quite understand how they worked, apart from guessing that it has something to do with your weight, the amount of time your feet were in contact with the ground and how heavy your feet touched the ground as the means to calculate all relevant informations.

As I said early on I was still running on my own and racing in only 10k, sparsely throughout the years. When I started a relationship with my boyfriend we went running together also for the period between 2011 september and 2012 april/may. We never ran together that much though especially when he had a different time table to me. Also he is much much faster than me. He really had to pull himself in to be able to run with me and thats not fair on him.

But everything in my running life changed when I joined my first running club, Nike White City Running Club in September 2012. I was in the store shopping for a new pair of frees when I saw their leaflet about a running club. I asked about it and decided to join them for a run a week later. When I attended my first session it was quite intimidating. Everyone looked really proper and fast and everyone knew everyone. But I will never forget how great that run felt. There were people faster and slower than me and I was able to mix in with the group speed wise better than I thought. I don't think I spoke to anyone really that night but it made me wanting to go back and run more with them. Another significant thing was when I went into the store looking for something else, after attending Run Club once or twice more, Mike the run leader remembered me and said Hi to me. I haven't felt part of something other than my university class for quite some time and this really made me feel accepted. I feel like I have now made a new bunch of friends. I started to integrate with the runners more and slowly opening up myself.

Up to this point, I had no idea about my progress in running, speed wise. Yes we were out running and I feel like I was running at a faster speed than I used to be when I was running by myself but I never compared. I was struggling a lot to achieve a better time, in my last two Bupa 10k. The one year between 2011 and 2012 Bupa 10k, I really thought I had improved, I thought I ran faster and I thought I have lost weight and therefore allowing myself to be speedier, I only took 10 seconds off my time and this really really frustrated me to no ends. So my big shock came when a few of us signed up for the South London 10k which took part in Wimbledon, and I came home with 46min and some seconds, shaving a good 2 minutes off my Bupa 10k time which only happened 6 months ago. I essentially reduced the same amount of time in my 10k race in half a year this time, rather than the 2 years before when I progressed from 50min to 48min. I could not believe it, I thought something was wrong with my Nike app. I thought this can't be right, there must have been something wrong.