As you saw yesterday, I now had the shoes, but I still needed one more little push to finally get out and try my hand at running again after three years. The next step was by chance seeing a phone app that was about training you to run from scratch to being able to run 5km. I double checked with a friend I knew who had tried this and he said that it worked for him. So taking a look at the program it was basically telling you to run for a bit, then walk for a bit, then run, then walk, and over the weeks it would increase the amount you are running at one time and decreasing the amount that you are walking.
Now I was all set and decided to go for a run. To gauge my ability I first decided to just try running for a mile. If you go around the outside part of the park near my house, than that distance is just about a mile. Thankfully I was able to finish that mile and at least know that I didn’t regress in the past three years. Now it was time to test myself and after a rest, I set out to run another mile. Somehow I got through that, and just needing one more mile to make 5km, I took a rest and then ran that third mile. So I came home happy that in my first time out I ran a 5km. Granted it wasn’t all at one time, but still it was pretty encouraging.
But next came the hard part how to train for a continuous 5km? Run for distance or run for time? So the next day I set off to do a bit of both. First I ran for one mile and took a break. Then I ran for ten minutes and took a break. For the final run, I decided do another ten minute run, but then a funny thing happened…I didn’t stop. After the ten minutes were up, I just kept running home. I figured I would stop there, but I just kept running around my neighborhood. I kept running until I hit one continuous 5km. I guess that program really worked. It allowed me to run a continuous 5km on just the second day.
I don’t know what I can say, I’m as shocked as you are. I would have never dreamed this were possible. But now I’m curious to see just how long/far I can run. And thankfully I’ll be able to do this thanks to two other presents in the picture. I don’t know if you can notice that I have my phone in an armband around my left arm. Without this I wouldn’t be running at all. Another reason I stopped running three years ago is at that time I could only put my phone in my pocket. This would bend the cord as the phone would move around, causing the earphones to break. Thankfully my earphones come with a warranty, but it was always a pain to be without earphones for a week or two while they were being replaced. Now I can run without fear of my earphones being damaged.
The other thing is the jacket. It has two nice tight pockets on the front, which is a great place to put my keys. They are no good in my short pockets because they always bounce around, but in the jacket pocket they don’t move and are out of the way. All these things together create the perfect storm needed to get me out running.
Also a good excuse to take a picture of myself. I actually feel a bit embarrassed by the other pictures of myself on this blog. I’m always wearing extremely baggy clothes (I like to be comfortable) but in a picture it makes me look huge. And I’m still ashamed that when I met my idol, I had such long nasty hat hair. Granted this picture is taken just a week after a mentally challenged (I hope that is the correct term now) person cut my hair (actual true story) so I'm not sure if it's any better. Regardless, I figured it would be nice to have a better representation of myself, and can show off my various presents as a thank you to my friends and family. After this let’s see how long until I break down and put up a shirtless muscle picture.
Oh and you may have noticed the socks. I actually do have some “normal” low cut socks. But since I always wear flip-flops, I never use them. I use these taller socks when I’m out hiking or cycling cause it doesn’t matter if they get muddy or sweaty. I must admit that I do like wearing them up high and kind of wish I had even taller socks. Because when Taiwanese see it and give me strange looks, I just like to respond in my mind that “yeah go ahead and judge, but this recently is/was the rage among the young people in America. Which means that in about a year or two everybody will be wearing their socks like this!” I wish I was exaggerating, but that really will happen. I need to get myself prepared now for when Taipei will be a sea of people with tall white socks.
