When someone ask me how the fuck I’m able to run 21k, I truthfully tell them that getting to 6.5k was the hardest part. I don’t know how or why, but 6.5k seemed to be the magic mark: from then on, things got way easier.
As my half-marathon training progressed and I got past 10, 12, 15k, it got harder again. Of course. (More on that later.) But so far, nothing has ever been as hard as that first six-and-a-half.
There are a lot of apps and training schedules to get you from couch to 5k, and 5k sounds doable. Right? It’s an hour-stroll, or an easy 20-minute bike ride to friends that live in another part of town. With a gradual ten-week build-up, you must be able to cover that distance while jogging. Right?
So I bought some good shoes, installed an app, and started my training.
I began to get suspicious when my interval training – that in week 6 had been alternating between, say, 6 minutes running and 3 minutes walking – suddenly upped the ante to an 8:2. That meant 8 minutes of running and just two minutes of catching my breath and trying not to poop. I survived the week, but I knew I wasn’t at all ready to proceed to the next level.
I repeated the 8:2 training for at least three more weeks, hoping I would one day automatically and organically break through the 8-minute barrier and actually “feel like” running a minute more. That didn’t happen. (In my fantasies, I would suddenly run 10k and be totally cool about it, like, “Oh my, did I just run 10k? Really? This old thang? I hardly noticed.” That also never happened.)
Being a natural quitter, my first instinct was to congratulate myself on making it this far and call it a day for the rest of the year. But I somehow mustered the motivation to continue, selected the next level on my app and went on with it. I can’t exactly recall how. I had knee pain, hip pain; my lower back hurt like hell. In hindsight, it was probably the pain that made me go on. That’s not to say I’m a masochistic person, I’ll do anything to avoid even the slightest of discomfort. (See also this paragraph’s first sentence.) But I found it alarming that jogging in an easy pace for only a couple of minutes in a row, guided by a schedule that was designed to keep you going (and purchase more training schedules), was causing these complaints. For fuck’s sake, I was about 34 at the time, not 74, and even my elderly neighbour ran around the block a couples of times a week. My body was protesting an act that, considering my age and physique, should’ve been feasible.
I became absolutely determined to keep on running. And for a while, I did. Since I was doing so well, I upped the ante: I vowed to properly warm-up and cool-down with every run and add exercises to strenghten my core.
Then, I skipped several training days, didn’t do anything for a whole week, until one day I selected the second to last training and took off with Slayer’s Reign in Blood on my player. The album is almost 29 minutes long (minus 2 seconds), so at the time, it seemed like a nice 5k timing guide.
Bad judgment. I ran very fast, with tiny angry steps. Angel of deaaaaath! Monarch to the kingdom of the deaaaaad. I returned home both exhausted and completely worked-up. Still, I was very proud. Bert and I celebrated by going out to dinner.
And that was that.
Back on the couch I was. Not by a conscious decision, nor because of an injury. I was just… done. I had liked running. I had liked pushing myself to 5k. I had liked that remark of a neighbour assuming I was training for that year’s 10k city run, the Singelloop (which I thought was just ABSURRRD). There was literally nothing standing in my way of going out for a little run once, maybe twice a week.
But I didn’t run.
A year and a half or so later, we moved to a temporary home in a different part of town, and I decided to go vegan and train for a half-marathon. I made these decisions simultaneously but separately. The one had nothing to do with the other, other than that in both instances, I wanted to do something. Transitioning from vegetarian to vegan wasn’t a problem, but for my running I needed a goal.
And this time, to get me off of the couch and out of my head, I knew it had to be fairly undoable.
A half-marathon seemed just right.
I started with one kilometre in front of our new house. Then, I downloaded my running app again, which of course remembered me and showed me my former 5k training progress. Several green check marks were missing but what’s worse; I couldn’t get to erase all the check marks in order to start over. The motivation had to come from within, ugh. And again, it was very hard to get to 5k.
I wasn’t sure how I would ever be able to substantially go beyond the 5. The metres dragged by. The interior dialogue made itself a recurring character towards the last kilometre of every run, telling me I was a delusional imposter who was unfit for the sports – and it had a point. I went from 5 to 5,2k with a lot of difficulty. Two or three trainings later, I would try to go for 5,4. Sometimes, that lousy 200 metres extra would prove to be a bite bigger than I could chew. Getting from 5 tot 6,5k took as much time as going from couch to 5k had. During those trainings, in those last stretches, I kept checking my phone, thinking there must be something wrong with my distance meter. 6,3… Still 6,3… Jump to the next digit behind the comma, damnit! Jump! JUMP!
But as painstakingly as I hit the 6,5k, as weirdly easy it was to get to 10k.
Somehow, right at that 6,5 mark, my mind just ‘clicked’. I remember thinking: ‘well, if I can do 6.5, I can do 10’. There was absolutely no logic behind that thought, nor any optimism. It was just that I had managed to run a distance I had previously considered beyond my reach, and now here I was. Regarding my 10k, I was still planning on a gradual build-up, but I knew it wasn’t about the 200-metre add-ons anymore. And again, I don’t know how or why, just that I’d passed a mark I never knew even existed.
I’ve talked to other runners about this, and some of them recognize this. Though, I have to say, most of them already felt like they were able to run a 10k after the first couple of weeks.
The week after, I planned to run another 6,5 but ran an accidental 8k. It wasn’t exactly the sporty, endorphine-rushed sensation I’d hoped it would be. But it did confirm my suspision that I was fit for running, after all.