Jogging for dream…
May 6th, 2020
It will be more of a personal post, than the others. I am still on cooldown from my latest jogging session, and drinking water. When this whole emergency phase started back in March, I was pissed. I accepted the thing, because that's for our own safety, and I was responsible for another person, and not just for myself. But the weather was getting nicer and that's the time usually when I start to go outside for my long walks. When I say long, I usually go 5 km+ every day, with rest day here and there.
This period in our life is about adaptation. We see, that in the USA people start to feel threatened because they can't go to the beach (which let's face it more dangerous to our health than any supermarket), and other stupid reason.
A French person run a marathon on his balcony. Crazy, right? Others doing similar things in their home, or near there home. Inspirational for everyone. And you really don't have to run or jog, just take 20 minutes every day to do some exercise: yoga, bodyweight exercises, or if you have some weight at home, do that…
Honestly, I would be really depressed if I didn't move daily. And I had that period a few weeks ago, I closed down myself.
A dream…
Ever since I was a little kid, I had trouble with exercise type of stuff. I was chubby, sometimes downright obese, even if I didn't look like it, because I loved wearing baggy clothes. I was always a short person, and I stopped at 165 cm, which is really embarassing for a young man. Nevermind the heart problems, and the hate for any P.E. stuff in school, which was 90% running. They really make you hate doing physical stuff.
About 10 and a half years ago I got testicular cancer, and after a surgery and intensive chemo, I am still here. A couple of years ago I started having dreams about school and P.E. stuff. We were running around the school as usual, but I recognized that instead of my classmates leaving me behind, as I never could keep up, I had a steady pace and I was actually matching their speed. I wasn't extra fast or anything, but at least I didn't stop running (which never happened in real life). After waking up, I remembered that dream for very long and I was happy after that, although I knew that my dream was far away from reality, like Earth was from Jupiter.
However after a few weeks I was getting a similar dream. This time the environment was different. It wasn't the school and it wasn't a P.E. class. My brother cheered me while I was running. Again, I never stopped and I felt comfortable during the whole dream. Very lucid, just like before. Other times it was my father who helped me. He was a wrestling trainer, so it made it even more real. But every time I had these dreams I felt that maybe, just maybe, I should try myself out.
And of course I failed with it, but later I've found that long walks are much more suitable for me as a type of exercise. I could do it every day, I can change pace and not feeling totally tired. Plus I live in a place where I can go a lot of ways. Sometime later even told my dad about these dreams, "I am not sure it's about running, but maybe that I should always move.".
I rarely have recurring dreams, so it must mean something, I thought.
In my opinion running on concrete can be really hurt the foot in the long run. I tried running on artificial grass, and it was much better for me, or even inside my flat. This is why I started my #jogginginside routine, because it felt better. Also I didn't want just give up, while these dream stopped, but it was still a…
Possibility…
I know I would never be able to be really fast, but for me endurance matters more, just not stopping. When I started my little sessions, I measured a place where I can have the least interruptions at home, and my first aim was 1 km or even a little less. Just see how far I can go. Well, I did my first km, around 12 minutes. I was so happy, and exhausted. I knew I wanted to do it again, and again, and again.
After I while I wanted to do some proper training stuff, so I dug up the Couch 2 5k program from the NHS website, which is weirdly got deleted sometime between last summer and this April. Last summer I used it, but couldn't go further than week 2.
And now I am on week 4 and just did the second day, ~1376 meters in 16 minutes. I am really proud of myself and I am confident than soon I can go as far as 2 km, without stopping. To be honest at this point I might not even aim for the 5k, but just for 30 minutes.
Oh and now I am 51 seconds faster on that 1 km… :)
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This was my barely edited post on day 10 of #100DaysToOffload. I don't know how will the remaining of the week will go, as I have some important stuff to do. I will try to write in the morning, so I can publish it around noon. Follow me on Mastodon if you like as I like to write and share more and more there.