I never liked running. At school, she went to physical education classes with pleasure, but she tried to avoid cross country in every way. Running is not my thing. I thought so until recently.
I would like to note that I have never played sports. She was fond of hiking in the mountains and worked out a little and irregularly in a sports club (aerobics, strength training, yoga). And when my daughter took a serious interest in running a couple of years ago, it surprised me incredibly (I didn't notice my daughter's athletic abilities - haha, that's putting it mildly, you still have to look for a less athletic person), and then it made me think about whether I should try it myself ? It is a sin not to take advantage of a situation when there is a person nearby who is ready to help in an adventurous undertaking and also knows how to motivate others.
My husband was very skeptical about my desire to start running, which served as an additional incentive. Probably, if he had persuaded me to run, I would have resisted, and so I had to start training regularly out of harm.
I had no idea about any methods, but my daughter helped me with the initial training plan and advised me what to read and look on the Internet about this topic. It turned out to be very interesting and informative.
I started by buying a GARMIN sports watch of the simplest model and registering in garmin.connect to track my training (it's convenient and visual). But the first runs under the Couch to 5K program, where you run a little and walk more, were very difficult for me. For all my optimism, I could not call this dissimilarity "running". I couldn't believe that in a few months I would be able to run 5 kilometers. This distance scared me, I did not feel it at all. But the decision was made, there was a plan, and I began to methodically implement it.
My daughter periodically encouraged me, made comments, gave advice, and answered questions. Little by little, I got used to the idea that somehow I would be able to run those scary five kilometers. There was no question of a decent time at this distance, the main task was to run evenly without stepping.
And then the terrible thing happened - my daughter registered me for a 5 km race in November 2013 (four months after I started training). It would never have occurred to me to participate in any competitions, but "the party said - we must, the Komsomol answered - there is".
Oddly enough, I liked the competition. The atmosphere of the holiday, a sea of positive emotions, my wonderful support group with a poster and loud chanting. Only my personal result was disappointing, but I always knew that I am a very slow turtle, but stubborn (disappointing personal result - 32 minutes, I had the same at the age of a couple of decades younger). At least the program was completed - I reached the finish line.
A man, seeing me run for the first time at this competition, encouraged me by comparing my run to the flight of a World War II TB-3 heavy bomber. In response, I had to start training for a distance of ten kilometers.
When winter came and snow fell, I was already involved in training and did not want to stop running. She even began to enjoy running, watching the world around her, enjoying the snow, air, and sun. Ten kilometers were somehow easier for me than the first five. Probably, the body realized that resistance is useless and decided to get pleasure. As before, I don't have to speak of any decent results, I still can't run ten kilometers in an hour.
In the spring of this year, she once again ran a five-kilometer distance at the competition, slightly improving her first result, and in the summer she began training for a half-marathon program. For some reason, this distance no longer scared me. However, there were difficulties here.
One of them is the regularity of training, and there were problems with this due to frequent trips. Regular running on trips is not always possible, especially for long distances. Such runs take a lot of time, and I am not traveling alone, so I have to show a miracle of ingenuity. But there are also advantages in training while traveling: every run in a new place is an additional excursion, and the list of places where I ran warms the soul (Cape Town, Budapest, Nuremberg, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bali, Borneo, Brunei, Athens, Olympia, Seattle, New York, San Francisco, London) (she praised herself).
She approached the autumn half-marathon already fully aware: she monitored her pace, knew the distance well, as she often ran on Trukhanovo Island, where part of the race took place. As a result, she put in 2.5 hours (from 2:25 it turned out at all) and took first place in her age group. And the point here is not about my remarkable abilities, but about the fact that by this age people are already smart and don't run or lose shape and don't run.
To improve the result, I need to approach training more seriously, work on running technique, pay more attention to exercises and speed training. So there is a lot of work ahead.
- Mriya.run: Space for Conscious Change. Learning, Practice & Tools
- The Mental Run
- From zero to a half marathon at almost 60: guest post