Saturday, April 7, 2012

First blog of a new runner

At 42 I never ran seriously at all, I have done quite a lot of sports in my time and I ran the odd kilometer but I never thought about being a serious runner. Until last year. 4 colleagues ran the Dam-tot-Dam race in Amsterdam. One of them being my boss. She threw a challenge into our team for us to start running and maybe join in a 10k run.


It took me about 4 months to pick up on the challenge. I just turned 42 and decided it was time to start running. (No way it's a Mid Life Crisis, at least I don't think it is) The real trigger was my new watch I got from my wife for my b-day. A fancy runners watch with HRM. So my next step was to buy me some shoes. The guy at Runners World in Utrecht was very helpful and knowledgeable. It took about 2 hours to fit me with the right shoes.


Okay, I got the watch, I got the shoes. Now how to proceed? I had no idea. I knew that if I just started running, I would blow myself up in about 500m. So I started searching the interwebs. With tips from some of my colleagues, I started looking for couch-2-5k schedules. And I ran into the Podrunner interval mixes. FANTASTIC, just what I needed. Interval training on BPM. So training schedule: CHECK.


But HEY, I'm sort of a nerd, so before I could start running I needed more gadgetty stuff. Not too much because the main focus should be on the running, right? And I found (again after tips from my more experienced running colleagues) RunKeeper.


So watch, shoes, music, gadget: check, check, check, check. All there is left to do is...... Run.


On March 17, 2012, 1 week after my 42nd b-day, I ran my first training. 4.03Km in 30 minutes. Boy was I tired but proud of my first steps!


Right after that, I found a run I HAD to participate in, on March 14, 2012, my 11 year old (young) nephew died of cancer, so when I saw there was a "Run for KiKa" my goal was set. 10Km on June 10 in Spaarnwoude.


From that moment on I started running twice a week, because with 2 Aikido training sessions a week,  3 runs a week is a bit much. From now on I will try to write a blog after each run to let you know how it goes and how my progress towards my goal(s) is going.


I'm looking forward to your feedback.


Greetinx
Johan

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