1/27 Check In

It has been about a week and a half since my last post, and there are some things that I need to bring you up to speed on.

I ran my first “competitive” 5K since high school on Saturday. For the past two weeks, I have been experiencing god-awful shin splints that made me believe that I wasn’t going to end up doing well in this race. Despite that, I ended up finishing in 29:52, which again, is nothing jaw-dropping to the seasoned runner, but for someone who started only three weeks ago from essentially square one, I will take this accomplishment with pride, though this is not the end-all be-all. I still need to drop nine minutes and fifty-three seconds if I want to reach my goal by the end of the year.

One of the biggest things that slow me down is obviously my weight. I have lost a good amount since I started this journey – about 10 pounds depending on the day. That being said, I still stand anywhere between 260 and 265 lbs. If I can run 29:52 at this weight, I imagine that I would be able to at least break 25:00 if I were thirty to forty-five pounds lighter. My ultimate weight loss goal is to get down to 180 lbs, and hopefully I can reach that goal by the time the year is up. I am certainly on track with that goal as of now.

I also ran my first 10k of the past three years (I ran one in 2021 and it did not go well at all) on Sunday. I actually felt really good and my shins really didn’t bother me at all unless I stopped.

I will say, it feels amazing to just be able to go out and run and not have to worry about dying from not being able to breathe or my legs being on fire the whole time. My shins are still an issue, but I feel like with some proper stretching and care they will be on their way to getting better.

My goals for this week are to try to get in at least 15 miles, including my 10K yesterday. I also waivered on my intermittent fasting a bit last week (though I was still consuming healthy foods), so I want to double down on that as well. Eventually, I want to kick the energy drink habit and make a full transition to coffee, but that is going to take time and will not be achieved in one week. I also need to start getting in the gym and doing some strength training, but I need to sit down and block out my time to really figure out when I can do that. If I am spending about thirty minutes to an hour running every day, on top of school and work, I don’t know where I would be able to fit the gym in, but I am going to do some looking this week and hopefully I can kick of February with a gym plan that works with my schedule.

All that said, though it has only been a few weeks, I feel like running is beginning to become a regular part of my daily life and something that I look forward to. It’s one of those hobbies that you can do to blow off steam, get lost in your thoughts, listen to a podcast, or just listen to music. I really don’t make time to do any of those things regularly anymore, so it’s nice to be able to set aside some dedicated time.