Thursday, May 17, 2012

2 years into Running

When I 1st decided to run in 2010, I missed the Putrajaya Night run and the next possible run was Energizer Night Run. I never have any target time for running, it was just like wanting to know after years of stopping active jogging and hiking since 2004 and a full of injury 2009, am I really fit to do a run. So I signed up for 10KM in ENR.

Before the race I felt very confident that I can complete the race without much problem. To my surprise, it was a real surfering race that I start counting distance of how far to go in the middle of the race, it was painful and after race I practically drag my foot to get shuttle bus to reach my car. At that time, I told myself that this is no good, I was not as fit as I thought, so, I signed up for the Std Chart KL Marathon, another 10KM race, and I did a few practice run around my housing area prior to run.

I started SCKLM with pretty good form, at least I thought so and at around 5KM I was itchy enough trying to pace a black runner who was real fast, I lost my breathing after following him for few hundred meters and the rest of the journey was just suffering again. I didn't have to drag my ass back home, but it was clearly a message to myself that, something needed to be taken seriously if I want to run.

From then I started to run more frequent, looking into the breathing, join forum, learn from youtube. Got myself 1st pair of Nike Plus sport band, change a new running tights, got a new pair of New Balance and a new cap from a friend. That ended my 2010 with sub60 for 10KM and lotsa pain in my feet due to over-trained and wrong running style.

I started to have running goals in 2011, target time, target distance of half marathon, target race, target ranking.... Things got more serious with Iphone Nike+ app and again, SCKLM 2011 sent me another lesson that I need to look at whether I am wearing the right type of shoes and consider another style of running. The journey of injury and pain came to an end with the new purchased Kinvara1 and I started to achieve PB in races.

Do I love running? I think may be not, I think I just have the passion to achieve things over and over again. I learnt alot about myself through running, I had moments of thoughts during run and I realise the longer the better I run, the more I gain from the run.

Will I continue to run? May be. May be I will move into Hiking again or Diving or Cycling. I haven't had any benchmark or target for them yet, but I think I will do them and start tracking.


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