30-Day Jogging Challenge
Living in a Canadian university town had me on a ridiculous diet made up of poutine, beer and more poutine. This lifestyle seriously affected my size, fitness and health. I decided to pick up swimming to get some activity into my life, and because my housemate at the time was an excellent swimmer, passing on a few tips and tricks on my mission to get active. I also found a pool buddy - a lovely girl from St Denis who I travelled around Mexico with. Her determination to improve her own swimming was infectious, and had us meeting twice a week at the uni pool for some aquatic exercises.
I still remember my first swim after 7 months of no-swimming-at-all: I was exhausted after the first hundred meters. But I kept going, with Dory/Ellen De Generes' voice in the back of my mind. "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim, swim." It proved effective, and before I knew it, I was swimming for twenty minutes without a break. It was one of those mind over matter thing. My fitness significantly improved, and it felt amazing. Both my mind and body was singing at me to stay active: I started jogging, taking spin classes and went on long, nature hikes in and around North America.
Hiking in Alogonquin, Onatario, CANADA 2012.
When I landed back in Sydney, I did not have my pool buddy and most people I knew had better things to do than to go on long, nature walks with me. And thus the 30-Day Jogging Challenge was born (this was also one of my first 30-Day Challenges).
The 30-Day Jogging Challenge was simply that - jog everyday for a month. I focused more on time than I did distance and speed, as I wanted to work on my breathing technique - which were rhythmically different to swim-breathing. Surprisingly, my first run did not kill me. I started off doing 20-minute runs, then slowly built my way up to 30-minute ones. By the final week of the challenge, I was running at an average pace of six minutes per kilometre - something I had never anticipated when I started the challenge.
Granted, this much running caused some pain around my knee area. It wasn't a constant pain, so I chose to ignore it as a sign that my body was adjust to increase levels of activity. I managed it by ensuring I warmed up the muscles, cooled down after every run, and stretched properly. I later when to see a physio about the intermittent knee pain, who diagnosed with me a flat foot and weak(er) hips - which meant my knees were not well-supported, especially during my runs. The physio said that this need not stop me from doing what I normally do. She said that I needed to build up some strength in my hips (through hip exercises), wear orthopedics in my flats and limits my swimming to freestyle.
I now run approximately three to four times of the week. The rest of the week are filled in with swimming, yoga or cycling. On days where I don't exercise, I can feel my body craving for activity and movement. Exercise is now a habit for me. I thoroughly enjoy being an active person, because I think it allows me to do much more with my life and engage in new activities I would otherwise dismiss (because of poor physique/fitness). I participated in the Colour Run in early 2013, and ran the City2Surf under 80 mins - a real personal achievement. I am looking into doing half-marathons, or a triathlon, but we'll see aye!
View after completing C2S, Sydney, AUSTRALIA 2013.
The 30-Day Jogging Challenge gave my body and mind a taste-test into how great it could feel after some physical activity. I get a sense of daily achievement from exercising. My fitness levels have improved significantly and I am generally more happy as a person. That thirty minutes of running/exercising really stimulates endorphins, gives me times to myself to clear my mind and just simply to de-stress. After any run/swim/cycle/yoga, I feel as if I was on top of the world.