So somehow two thirds of August have passed without me blogging. It's not that nothing happened, lots of things happened, some things even worth blogging about, but the blogging itself somehow didn't happen. I blame it on the heat, it melts one's brain until you can't form proper sentences. Or remember that you want to form them.
Despite the heat, one of the things I have been doing is running. I call it running because that is what you're supposed to call it, 'go for a run etc', but it's not like I'm going anywhere fast. My average speed is 7 minutes per kilometer, or 8,5 km/hr (that's 5.2 miles an hour for the imperialists). It is a steady speed, I can keep that up for all of my run without any decline, but it's still in the 'slow but steady' category. The aim is first to build up some more stamina so I can actually run for a longer time, and then build up the speed.
But why do I run? I could say a lot of inspirational things about feeling healthier or setting goals for myself or whatnot, but I think Matt Inman basically said it all in his comic about running long distances and 'beating the blergh'. Okay, so he runs ultra marathons. I run 2 k, max. The principle is the same. He mentions 'the Blergh', the thing that keeps you from moving, that encourages you to eat or do unhealthy things. Basically, the Blergh is human nature, as we have been programmed for thousands of years to eat as much as we could whenever there was food and not to spend any energy doing other stuff. It's evolution, and now that food is so abundantly available, it's making us fat and lazy. We're not the only ones; all creatures are basically lazy when their basic needs are fulfilled.
Now Matt lives in the US, where you can get a full plate of fast food at the price of an apple here. I don't eat unhealthily, I just don't move a lot. I bike to and from work every day, and some days, that's all the exercise I get. I spend 9 hours sitting behind a computer screen, when I get home there are chores and whatnot, but usually I spend the evening with friends, and again we spend it sitting down. So for me, the problem was not so much food as movement. I spent my time, that precious commodity, doing other things than moving.
This is not good. It wasn't making me feel good. I wanted to move more.
So why running? It's basically the easiest, most down-to-earth sort of movement there is. You put on your running shoes, and you go out the door. No membership required, no team mates or specific time slots or special equipment needed. You just go run.
I didn't actually just put on my shoes and started to run, I did some preparation and myself on some sort of build-up schedule. The first aim was running 15 minutes at a stretch. I specifically didn't set myself any distance goals, because my average speed is so slow that they would be harder to achieve, and if I know anything about myself it is that I needed to get some results in fast, or I would just stop doing it. So 15 minutes at a stretch was the goal, and after about three months of on-and-off training (with a two week holiday in between), I actually reached that goal. Woo hoo!
But as I reached it, I realised it was not getting there. It was about building up my strength, my endurance, about getting my body into shape (by which I mean; better at exercising. Not losing weight, although that is a nice bonus when it happens). Some days, the run goes perfectly and I feel great and I'm going faster than I thought or further than I thought and I experience a bit of the runner's high that 'real' runners are crazy about. Some days, I feel slow and cumbersome and I can't even reach the minutes I did last time, let alone run the extra time I'd set myself for that particular day. Not to worry. I ran. It's always better than not running. The goal is the running in itself, the feeling good about doing that. I'll leave the other stuff, the fancy gear and the special diets and the races to the pros.
Maybe that is the trick, for me at least: if the goal is to move more, to get your butt of the couch and build up your muscles and your endurance, just going out to run is enough. It's doesn't have to be fast, it doesn't have to be far. You just have to do it.
