My Journey back to Running - My Actifit Report Card: April 27 2024

When I completed the 8.28km track last week, I posted it here and it was rewarding to share my new achievements with all of you this year. Admittedly, it was quite refreshing given that some of the inspiration came from seeing others being consistent with their goals here. I have been falling short in being consistent with running since 2023. Fair enough, I had a gym subscription last year and focused on toning rather than exercising my heart muscle. In most gym sessions, I did not maintain my endurance for cardio exercise but rather increased my strength.

Trading Endurance with Strength

I was impressed last month when we went to the field site to collect 16 lead-acid batteries and I was able to carry two Batteries at a go. The batteries were meant for powering our field station and each battery weighed about 15 kg. There were two of us ladies and we took a rest along the way which was about 500m a trip. I am fairly confident with my strength to even move around furniture around the house, no I can't push a car if that is what you are wondering but I can push you in a trolly in a grocery aisles.😊

On a serious note, I didn't realise that my endurance had gone down. I am lying I know I'm not as fit as I used to be and last week I got too excited with the 8.28 km milestone. I even shot myself in the foot as I told Kingsleyy that I would run 10km this weekend. If I were a smoker, I would question the brand I had when I made that promise because I regretted it this morning after running 7km. I wished I could hit reset to delete that promise and the audacity to claim that I'm a mesomorph, I can do that swiftly.

Finding My Stride Again

I woke up to run the usual road today to hit 10km. I kept reminding myself of my younger self who could complete 10km in roughly an hour. I had stamina and a lot of endurance back then. I had rekindled the fire in 2020 just before COVID hit us hard and upgraded to running 21km races in about 2 hours and 30-50 minutes. This was one of the hardest milestones and I have not attempted to increase beyond that which meant running at least 32km or half marathons.

Now, I have more strength but less endurance to run long distances. As a result, today I ran 10.55 km in about 1hr:55min (see my trail at the end of the post). The first 8km was like a threshold my body could take. I could push myself to that but after that, the last 2km was the hardest. I think I had to find inspiration from my younger self and the endurance I built back then probably helped a bit. Otherwise, I was biting more than I could chew to aim for 10km after not being actively running.

Moving forward, I plan to take it slowly and aim to stick to a cumulative weekly goal. Trying to catch up to a weak goal in one day is not sustainable because I felt like quitting today. I had to tap into my past pace and visualise my younger self running and that's how my past endurance became my motivation to finish today. Most importantly keeping the promise made that I will run 10km this weekend. Would I do it again next week? Only my weekend mood or dopamine dosage will tell.

Tracked using the MAP RUNNER Free App

Cheers for now!💕

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