My 1st Year Running Anniversary!

Wow! It has been a year since I started running. And it has been a year since my first blog post. The Just Another Runner blog is still up and I am still running.

In the beginning, I set the following short-term goals (within 12 months)

• run for 30 minutes straight
• finish a 5K race
• finish a 10K race

I actually achieved all these goals by February!

Of all the health and fitness activities that I tried after college, running has been the only one that I was able to do regularly and for a very long period. I have tried diets, lifting weights, tennis and the "old running" which is badminton. None lasted very long.

What has happened in my first year of running:

1. My wife and I finally found a fitness activity that we can do together. Except for one (KOTR), my wife also joined the running events I joined. Except for a handful of times, my wife and I went to UP Diliman together (98% of the time) to run.
2. Except for the few weeks I stopped running in January and February because of plantar fasciitis, I regularly ran the whole year. There was no week I didn't run.
3. I can now run 1.5 hours straight. I can run continuously for 1 hour any time at my easy pace. At first, there was no such thing as an easy pace for me and I couldn't last 5 minutes.
4. The longest run-walk-run I did was 19km.
5. I lost 31lbs. I started out at 217 lbs. and I'm now 186 lbs.
6. My size 38 pants were tight, now my old size 36 pants are loose. I'm probably a size 34 now but I'm not yet buying new clothes because I'm still hoping to lose a couple more inches.
7. Before, my blood pressure was 130/90 with meds. Now, it's 110/75 without meds.
8. Before, my resting heart rate was 85 bpm. Now, it's 60 bpm.
9. I have joined a total of 17 road races - 4 5k races and 13 10k races. I'll be running another 10k on Dec. 5 for a total of 18 races in 2010.
10. My 1st 5K was 45min. My best now is 37min.
11. My 1st 10K was 1:35 hours. My best now is 1:18 hours.
12. I sleep better at night now (except before a race), probably because I do my weekday runs at night. Though, on race days or on weekend long run days which are early in the morning, I don't get to do much the rest of the morning and early afternoon as I sleep through them.
13. Running also caused schedule challenges at times. There are a lot of times that family schedules are worked around running schedules and most of the time, running became the priority. As much as I love running now, and though it has given me a lot of health and fitness benefits, running should be balanced with the rest of my life and not made the center of it.
14. I have plantar fasciitis. The only foot pains that I experienced before where sprained ankles and in-grown toenails. It was only this year that I even heard of an injury called plantar fasciitis. The whole year, I had heel pain. At the beginning of the year, it was only on my left heel. By May it was on both feet. Although the pain most of the year was not as bad as during January and February when I had to stop running. I learned, the hard way, to ease up on my running whenever I feel the heel pain getting worse. It's probably one of the reasons I can't run fast (excuses, excuses). Because of this injury, Crocs has become my favorite footwear - I have five pairs.
15. I have accumulated the following running gear:
• 6 Running Shoes - New Balance 800, Nike Free Everyday 2, Nike LunarGlide+, Mizuno Wave Elixir, Asics GT2130 and New Balance 905. No Adidas yet (hmmm)
• Singlets and Shirts - Adidas (5), Nike (3), Reebok (2), New Balance (3)
• Running Shorts - Nike (6), Adidas (3), New Balance (1)
• Running Caps - Nike (1), Adidas (1)
• Belts - Nathan Hydration Belt and Secondwind Accessory Belt
• Garmin FR305
• Spyder Shades
I have accumulated the following running books:
• Complete Idiot's Guide to Running and Jogging - Bill Rodgers (National Bookstore)
• ChiRunning - Danny Dreyer (gift)
• Galloway's Book on Running - Jeff Galloway (eBay)
• Marathon! - Jeff Galloway (eBay)
• The Extra Mile - Pam Reed (National Bookstore)
• Runner's World The Complete Book of Running - Amby Burfoot (gift)
• Runner's World Run Less, Run Faster - Bill Pierce, Scott Mur, Ray Moss (BetterWorldBooks.com)
• The Lore of Running - Tim Noakes (BetterWorldBooks.com)
• Bill Rodgers' Lifetime Running Plan - Bill Rodgers (BetterWorldBooks.com)
• Beginner's Guide to Long Distance Running - Sean Fishpool (BetterWorldBooks.com)
• The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing - Phil Maffetone, Mark Allen (BetterWorldBooks.com)

Who would have thought that I would be running? I daydreamed about it but I was not convinced myself that I could still do it. I was such a couch potato that when my children heard some of my friends talking about me playing basketball and joining basketball tournaments back in high school and college, they were confused and asked if they were talking of the same person. When I told my son I was planning to start running and join a 5K race four months later, he asked, "Do you want to die?"

How did it actually start anyway? How did the idea of running get planted? No, it wasn't Inception-style. My wife's constant "reminder" to get off my butt and move helped. But the idea started to take root when my high school batchmate - Awo, posted in our batch's Yahoogroup an article written by another high school batchmate - Rajee, about how he decided to get fit, trained for a triathlon, and finished his first triathlon. I was inspired. Wow, Rajee is a triathlete, I want to be one too! No, I didn't go out and started running. Like how I run, it was a slow process. The idea simmered for a while.

Then another batchmate - Emil, a running buddy from high school, posted an article from The Philippine Star, about another batchmate - Jammy, and his running family. Again, I thought, "Wow, Jammy is running!" The article also talked a lot about his wife Jaymie's very popular running blog - The Bull Runner. I immediately headed to www.thebullrunner.com. I probably spent at least two hours reading and re-reading through the articles in the blog. Aside from being inspired, I also got motivated.

Then, I went to her Races page where the schedule of upcoming races are listed. Finally, I decided I can do this and picked a race.

I wrote down the date on a Post-It and posted it on the bathroom mirror. I then got off my butt, moved to the TV room, removed all the clothes hanging on the treadmill, got on it and started running ... I mean shuffling ... for three full minutes. And the rest is history!

Running definitely helped in making 2010 a good year and a lot of things I look forward to in 2011 are running related.

I'm currently doing Galloway's half-marathon program and aiming for my first half-marathon at Condura on Feb. 6. If everything goes well with that 21K, I might aim for the full-marathon at CamSur on September. Those are my broad running goals for 2011.

This morning, after dropping off my daughter in UP, I decided to drive the long way out of the campus, going around the academic oval.

I gazed at the runners. I am one of them.