Tag: alsos neas smyrnis

A month ago I was halfway there; today, after the most exhausting run yet, I’m proud to say that I can run 5 kilometres and then some.

To be more precise, I finished Week 9 when I was in Loutra last week, but the distance I ran within the time limit of 30 minutes was 4k instead of 5. Today I did Podrunner’s Week 10 Graduation Run 1, which was 35 minutes long and at a higher BPM than usual (the whole idea of this podcast is to run with the beat provided – usually techno, house or electronic music indefinable by me). In the introduction for the graduation week it said that it would make me feel good about how far I’ve come and that I would find it easy to complete. It wasn’t easy at all, but I pushed through and finally did run 7 circuits of the Alsos in 35 minutes, with an unplanned 30 second pause to say hi to Alex and Ilias who I ran into while, um, running.

7 x 820m, which is the length of the circuit, equals 5740m. Considering that the Alsos isn’t flat (the highest point is 20m higher than the lowest one, which adds a bit to the difficulty level), I think I did quite well.

I only began running less than 2 months ago. It was October 5th that I did Week 1, Day 1. I had to run 60 seconds for every 90 seconds I had to walk, for 20 minutes. I’ve come far. I didn’t expect I would make progress this quickly, but here I am. HabitRPG, the proximity of the Alsos to home and the variety of places to run in to shake things up a bit – I had runs in Prespes, Loutra and Ommen, as well as the Alsos – probably helped. Another factor I still can’t say with certainty whether it helped or not but my gut says it did, was my abistence from PMs since the beginning; still experimenting with that one.

I will continue running, probably starting next week with Gateway to 8K or Bridge to 10K, I haven’t decided yet. Sofia will definitely find me running in the parks and pumping those legs! That post by The Oatmeal… Now I understand perfectly what he meant. I feel the same. It’s a goal, it’s exercise. I’m doing it for myself. What could the next challenge for me be?

I don’t want to toot my own horn here – at least, not just that, for if I didn’t want to boast just a little bit for achieving what I thought was something I could never do, I wouldn’t be posting here; no: I mainly want to encourage everyone to re-evaluate what you think is and isn’t possible and start with small steps in order to become whatever it is you would like to change into, or do whatever it is you would like to do. We tend to see the best of the best on the Web – that guy who walked across China, the other person who draws amazingly, the girl who can play the piano and take everyone within earshot for a trip – and we forget that there’s hard work, discipline, failures, self-doubt and probably years or decades of dedication that we never see. However, everything starts with something, “Rome wasn’t built in a day” or “Even the longest journey must begin where you stand” and I’m thankful that the Web isn’t just teaching us to constantly compare ourselves with the world’s best, but also provides us with the tools and community to start doing what it had never even occurred to us we could.