Monday, March 8, 2010

The Running Bug

While waiting for the inguinal ligaments to regain full strength, I have to limit myself to smaller sails and lighter winds. Because this is less fun, I decided to explore other sports. We were introduced to running during the Cebu City Marathon, held one week before the Sinulog Grand Parade. We signed up for the 5k.


I ran my first 5k in 40 mins (8 min/km). We had to wake up at 430 because the run started at 530 in the morning. It was so tiring that I slept the whole day after the run, woke up just to eat dinner, and slept again thereafter.

Since then, I am beginning to fall in love with running. Compared to windsurfing, we do not need to haul, rig and tune equipments, not to mention, rely on the weather forecast which is somewhat unreliable at best. Compared to basketball, we do not need 10 players and a basketball court. All I need is a pair of running shoes, none really if I am running barefoot.

The best thing? I get to share it with my fiancee. (ayeeee!) We actually celebrated our valentines day with a run, a 10k dubbed Run with a Smile. We finished the run in 1:14 (7:24 min/km).

Cebu is enjoying a golden age in running right now with road races almost every week. We signed up for the rotary run the following week and finished the 7k run in 57mins (8:08 min/km).

I decided to stop playing basketball temporarily to devote more time, focus and training to running. With an untrained cardiovascular system and a heavy frame (6'1", 190 lbs), I am still at the slower end of the running population. I am also looking at my diet to shed some weight hoping it will do good to my running and be gentlier with my knees. I am used to tight shoes and my Adidas Attune running shoes is not an exception. I later found out that "tight" is not good for running. So, after reading various running reviews and running blogs, I decided to get myself a Nike LunarElite because they are ....ahmmm... cute. I also bequeathed the fiancee a Nike LunarGlide to keep her company while I am temporarily working in Ormoc during weekdays.
According to the running gurus, shoes are supposed to be broken in for a couple of kilometers for at least a week before deploying them for a long run. We were itchy and so, even if we got the shoes only a day before, we used them for the Quota International 12K classic. Even if I am running 20km/week already , the result of the 12K run was not what I expected because I burned out in the last 3 km and have to do walking breaks. Our time was 1:32 (7:39 min/km). It was still an improvement from our previous runs but I dont understand why the fiancee seemed to have no effort during the whole run. Maybe her tae-bo and pilates made the difference. Maybe it was the shoes. I should have gotten the LunarGlide instead! tsk tsk
I will be increasing my weekly mileage to 30km and do some speed and hill runs. Expect this blog to be about running until the 2010 Habagat (southwestern) season sets in.

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