Slowly slowly, I'll get back on track. Slowly

Where to start, where to start. So I had a pretty rough second half of January where this whole thing sort of fell apart. I ended up not doing a single run for about a week and a half - although that doesn't sound like much, it ends up being a 30k running debt!

I have to admit, posting about the struggle I was having made it a little easier to cope. Not that I need to justify my lack of runs, but noting down why it happened and making sure I didn't glaze over the tough times really helped with the mental block I was having.

If you're interested in my thoughts right after a run, feel free to add me on RunKeeper (amzism). I generally makes sure to add in a short comment after each run. It's only recently gotten to be less of a struggle to get out there and run, and I'm starting to feel like maybe I can push myself to improve times too. Very slowly, I'm getting back into it. Only a matter of time before each run is a little longer. Right now I'm happy to just focus on 5k at a time.

Now, I'm sure people don't come here for the (awesome) commentary, so here are some pics.

Look at that! 20km for Feb already! For this week I have done a little over 15k so far, so 5 more and any extra will be going towards run debt. I'm hoping to knock off at least 5 this week.

And here's my little running man. So proud of you buddy, that little blue block is slowly building up. You know, I cannot wait till I hit half way, just seeing that graph fill up will be the biggest motivation to continue. I am so linking back to this post when my phone reads 50% and 500k!

To anyone struggling with things right now (life in general seems to have been pretty tough for a lot of people lately) - hang in there. Things have a way of sorting themselves out when you stick around for long enough :)

January - 1 month down, 11 to go

It's been an interesting first month.

I've been thinking about this post for a while and whether or not I would write it up due to its personal nature. I've decided that in order to stay true to myself and make sure I keep a realistic account of this year, I need to be honest here.

It has been a tough month. I kicked off the month strong with the first 10k I've ever run and followed on by keeping up for a little while. Unfortunately it fell apart quite spectacularly.

I'm not sure how many people know this or how many people have noticed before but I often spiral into some pretty dark places. Sometimes it's triggered by my surroundings - stress at work, toxic relationships - but sometimes it's nothing. If I'm really honest to myself, this particular time it was nothing.

I developed this deep sense of melancholy which I was able to keep in check for the most part. I was still running and working hard but everything was tainted this slight blue. This blue made everything just a little more difficult and slowly my energy levels dropped. I can't explain the frustration I felt from this. When I am this sort of exhausted it is usually from inactivity but with my focus still on running, I couldn't explain why I had no energy.

It all hit me when I watched this one video. It really highlighted how finite our time is, more and more I realised how time poor I had become.

I won't go into any more detail. It's enough for me to say that I struggled. In fact I'm not entirely out of this slump yet but I can vaguely see the end of it. It has been a tough month and in order for me to get through this challenge, I need to remember that this has happened and keep in mind that it might happen again.

So how did I go this month?

Look at that little running silhouette go! It's still quite a dismal progress chart, but I am only one twelfth into the year. In terms of being on track? Remember how I struggled to think of a decent way to decide if I were on track or not? Well just to further complicate matters, I've decided on a calculation method for the end of month totals.

January has yielded me 66.7k. I've calculated that 1000k over a year is equivalent to 2.74k a day and since there are 31 days in January, I should have clocked up 85k so far which leaves me at -18.3k. My mini goal for February is to get rid of some (or rather most) of this running debt.

So without dwelling on the tough times, let's bid farewell to January and welcome February. It's like that wise fish once said 'just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming...'

Not always rainbows and butterflies...

I've hit a bit of a brick wall this week. If I'm truly honest to myself, I started hitting it probably a week ago, but I managed to work through it. This week I haven't been so successful.

Usually when something like this happens, I gloss over the difficult times and then really celebrate the good times and the wins. I've decided to be a lot more honest this time. I'm struggling. By Thursday, I only needed to run 10km, but somehow I've managed to not find the time to even do that. I just couldn't get my mind into it. I had an excuse for each day.

To help myself get through this, I've decided to look at this a different way. Instead of continually reminding myself that I am 10km behind, I am going to put this 10k to the side. Tomorrow starts a new week and instead of stressing over this rough week (or 2) I am going to try and stay positive and get back into the swing of things.

The reason I've hit this little running stump is because I've been feeling a little down. I'm reluctant to call it depression because I haven't ever been diagnosed, but it's a really glum sort of feeling. It's really sapping my energy - which annoys me to no end since I picked up running to combat these blues (amongst other reasons).

So in the interest of being honest, I am now 10k behind. To save my sanity, I am putting that 10k on credit, and I will pay it off slowly. So that puts me at 50km down, 950km to go.

Progress charts always look sad at the beginning

Can you see that tiny blip at the beginning of the chart? That is my progress. And that blue line at the top? That's the 'Goal' line. There's also a little running guy at the bottom, nice touch RunKeeper, very motivating.

It's hard to decide whether or not I am on track. Do I count each week by Sundays? Or do I count every 7 days? This is probably one of the things I should establish early on and hope that it's the right decision.

I think ultimately my nerdy analyst side is telling me that start of week is Monday and end of week is Sunday, so for ease I'm going to stick with that.

I am hesitantly glad to say that I am currently on track, as long as I manage to run 7.41km tomorrow, then I will have clocked up 40km for the year so far. I really need to start doing morning runs again. and until I get fitter, I should probably do 4 runs a week to get these distances. I'm feeling like a binge runner - freaking out and cramming in a bunch of kms to make sure I don't fall behind.

In terms of fitness, I think my muscles have finally accepted that this is happening. The first week was pretty rough, I felt so sore all over and I really needed to push myself to keep up the pace. The 5k run on Monday was my worst in a very long time, geez looking at the picture above my 5k times are all over the place.

I need to get into a good routine, get some morning runs in and hopefully this will start going a little smoother. Looking forward to a end of January update ^_^



Just one more RunKeeper tracking picture, I love progress charts and graphs (but like I said, they always look a bit depressing and out of reach at the beginning.

Januarys - the prompter of resolutions

Okay. So this is a little scary for me.

With the new year, comes the new years resolutions. I have my set neatly tucked away in a sealed envelope for me to open at the end of this year (that's a different story for a different blog), but there is one goal that I want to keep in plain sight. I said to a friend jokingly that I would run 1000km this year and the more I thought about it, the less unrealistic it seemed (side note - I know people are running marathons and such, but I don't see myself as a runner. The fact that I am running at all is still quite a shock to me). 

Committing myself to this goal is scary enough as it is, but I've decided to set up this blog to document the year and my running progress with the hope that it will keep me accountable. Also I am hoping that by having something to update regularly, it will make sure I continue to work towards this... it's not really something I can cram into the last month of the year.

So I am officially putting it out there. My 2014 running resolution is to run a total of 1000km by 31st Dec 2014. As well as this goal, I am committing to giving regular updates with monthly distances to make sure that I am on track. RunKeeper is telling me that this is an average of 20km a week, that level of consistency is what terrifies me the most I think.

My first run of the year was on Friday where I actually ran my first ever 10km! This is a huge achievement for me and I'm so excited to be able to start this thing off on a high note. It took me just over an hour and I woke up quite sore the next day, but that's not the point. Looking forward to more (and faster) 10km runs in the future.

Feel free to laugh at my pain and celebrate with me for my wins, wish me luck!