Thoughts on week #1

The first week of training for this year's Amsterdam Marathon is over and it ended on a high today. I ran 12mi/19.3km at a nice, easy pace and heart rate and it felt fantastic. The weather was great too. Sunny, but cool with a just a bit of a breeze.

This run has been a long time coming.

Two weeks after the Greater Manchester Marathon, I ran the Göteborgsvarvet half marathon. I had a lovely day (how could you not? It's the biggest half marathon in the world!), but a very slow run. I hadn't at all recovered from running 42.2km just a fortnight prior. I wasn't in any pain at all, but I felt like I was running with concrete posts for legs.

A few days later, I came down with a sinus infection. For seven days, I was on antibiotics and barely got out of bed. It was pretty nasty. So was what came out of my nose, but I'll spare you the details! Needless to say, I didn't run at all. When I finally felt well enough to hit the pavement, my running was awful. I was slow, I was sluggish, my heart rate was through the roof, and what would have been an easy run just weeks before felt like a 5k race (and they hurt!)

I wasn't best pleased. I knew I had to let my body recover from both the illness and the marathon and that meant running fairly short distances very, very slowly for a couple of weeks. It was humbling. I was running at a pace I hadn't seen since... well, since before I started training for my first marathon this time last year. It wasn't much fun, but it was for my own good, so I stuck it out.

This week, it feels like everything's finally come together. Last Sunday, I got a 10k PB on a challenging course, I really pushed myself on my hard workouts, and today, I ran the farthest I've run since Göteborgsvarvet and felt like I could have run forever.

Bring on week two!

How It All Began

So, I'm a runner. I come from Kenya. I am not a Kenyan Runner™, however. I'm not whippet thin and lightning fast. I didn't start running at an early age. In fact, I was the pudgy kid, turned overweight teenager who hated sport and exercise. I loathed P.E. at school and absolutely dreaded having to run more than a few metres.

Later, as a pretty overweight adult, who was very uncomfortable in her skin, I realised I needed to have some physical activity in my life and watch my diet, lest I remained overweight and uncomfortable. I joined the university gym, used the elliptical, did some aerobics classes and briefly dabbled with jogging as a means to lose the extra weight (and even did a couple of charity 5ks). It wasn't much fun, but I lost quite a bit of weight. My commitment to a healthier lifestyle waxed and waned wildly, and while I never regained all the weight I'd lost, I yo-yoed a lot.

In the Spring of  2011 I decided I would try running again. But this time, it wasn't going to be for weight loss. This time I was doing it for the challenge. To prove to myself that I wasn't destined to be sedentary and fat. This time, I was signing up not just for a charity 5k, but for a 10k too.

The first day I ran, I did three run 5 minutes/walk 3 minutes intervals. It was really hard, but I did it. I continued to slowly plod along, three times a week, until I could shuffle for 25 minutes, then 30, then 40... and you know what? I started to get a little faster and a little lighter and most importantly, I was really starting to enjoy myself.

In June, two months after I had started running, I ran my first 10k. I ran the whole thing and finished in 1:05:21. I was so proud. I had become a runner and I was hooked.

The 2011 Mersey Tunnel 10k. My first race!

So hooked, in fact that I signed up for the Liverpool Marathon in October. It's a BIG jump from 10k to marathon, but with consistency and sheer bloody-mindedness, it can be done! Nothing I've done before or since has hurt as much as that marathon did, but I finished it in 5:14:02.

Me and the Big Flag at the finish of the Liverpool Marathon.

And so a love affair with distance running began. Since then, I've run two half marathons, and, what I consider to be my greatest achievement so far, the Greater Manchester Marathon in 4:27:58. Forty-six minutes faster than my first marathon.

Before: A 5+ hour marathoner.

After: a sub-4:30 marathoner

So, what next? Another marathon, of course! Specifically, the TCS Amsterdam Marathon on October 21st. Today was my first day of training and I can't wait to see where the next four months take me.