Running Again

So, if you’ve been following my blog, you know that I took a break from running after the Lewa race for some rest and recovery time.  I rested for a month. I had a great time of R&R, and I am now healed.  During that time of rest, at one on my visits to my physiotherapist, I asked him to recommend a trainer I could work with to improve my running capacity and speed.  He gave me a number, asked me to call the person as that was the best trainer I could work with, he said. And I made the call.  Introduced myself and mentioned whom I got the number from. It was halfway through that conversation that I realized I had no name to the person I was on the phone with. At this time, I thought it was too late to ask, and made a mental note to ask Physio Dude for the name. And so after asking about my current training program, he advised me to up my game and put in more volume to my training program. How? By doing 10km three times in the weekdays, and 15km on the longer run on Saturday.  So I was to do 10km (Mon), 10km (Wed) and 10km (Fri) followed by 15km (Sat). What??? I had to work hard to improve my game, he reminded me when I expressed shock at the intensity of the program LOL!  He asked me to call him again when I accomplish this new program.

So the next time I saw Physio Dude, he asked if I had called X. Who? And it turns out that my new trainer is one of Kenya’s marathon gold medalists, several gold medals in world marathon races, actually! Wow! I had to google this info, realizing the weight of the name. So now, on the one hand, I am intimidated because of who my trainer is!!! What??? On the other hand, because of who he is, surely my running ought to improve, right? I am ready to work hard for sure. And so I started running again 2 weeks ago, slowly working my way up to 10-10-10-15-kays training week.  The thing with running is that should you take a break, you always start again with shorter distances, having lost the fitness during the rest. And then work your way back to where you were when you stopped.  The good news is, it can be done. And moving back up is always faster than the first time you did it. The muscles ‘remember’ as you start to train again :).

And this applies to life as well. When, along life’s journey you take a hit and need to stop and rest/breathe, you realize that it takes some time to catch up to where you were. It could be a sickness, loss, bad financial/investment judgement, a detour in the ‘wrong’ direction, etc. Whatever it is, just know that you will get back up. With your learning curve, you will have learnt some ‘tricks’ along the way, and you will find your way back to where you were, or better. You just have to keep on moving…

And so here’s to better running! …and better days ahead 🙂