Álex's log

In 7 weeks, I have my first half-marathon. I don’t have a specific time in mind for that day; finishing it is good enough for me. But I will try to hit the 01:45:00 mark.

I want to do an experiment for myself. I want to document how each training week feels at the end. So in 7 days, I’ll write how this week went. How many sessions I had and how they felt. My pains and even the weather. Why? Because I know progress is a difficult thing to see, and in a few years, I will look back at this and say, “Damn, it was hard”. And who knows? Maybe someone reads this and gets motivation to do something that feels hard.

Previously in “Doing it all wrong”…

I’ve been running on and off for several years. And until recently, without any kind of plan or goal, just go out and run. Usually, this is a terrible idea. While running can be really healthy, doing it without proper form, or mindset leads to issues.

Before continuing this tail of wrongdoings, I need to add that I have always, since I was a child, loved to run. I was quite good at PE. I was one of the fastest of my classmates, and among them were several who used to compete. My mother will always regret not forcing me to enroll in the running team. So do I. But it is what it is. Maybe if I had, I would never have liked it. Who knows.

But even with my natural predisposition to run, I managed to screw up things really badly.

My first running plan for years was to go out for a max-effort run (I didn’t know you could run slower!) and then stop running for days or weeks to recover. My first “serious” goal was to reach 5k in 30 minutes; for no reason, it sounded like a challenge to me. And it wasn’t. I reached that point quite fast, in about 2 weeks of just running. Then no improvement happened anymore. I didn’t know that it wasn’t a proper milestone for me. To be honest, I didn’t even know what my pace was.

These informal attempts at training happened for years until the COVID lockdowns were done.

Then I realized two things. Running was calming. And I was hurting my back badly. Well, to be fair, that might be because of my job, all day long in front of a computer in whatever posture.

So I went back to the gym (I had been going on and off for years) and start doing strength training with, again, no plan, structure or goal in mind. As you might be starting to think now, there is a pattern here. Planning? Goals? I also realized that.

I strongly believe that hitting the gym without a goal is a recipe for failure. It was for me for years. And I see it in most of my acquaintances. We all go with good intentions. And that’s great, but it doesn’t work for most of us. Goals must be measurable. “I want to be fitted” is not quantifiable. You don’t know when it’s done, and you can’t track the progression easily if you are a beginner like me. Also, a goal should be hard. You can have milestones along the path, but there should be at least one long-term goal to fight for. That was and is my intention every single day I train.

And what is that goal? Well, a classic one: To run a marathon.

Let me tell you that when I got the idea, it sounded feasible. Now it does too. I know I will make it sooner or later. But for a while, it felt like a stupid idea.

What after the goal?, you might ask. I don’t know. Maybe I don’t like the experience at all, and I decide to run shorter distances. Or maybe I want to do another activity. Who knows. But I am not there yet. And that’s the point of the goal and the milestones. You need milestones along the road to stop thinking about the goal. To have small things to evaluate. You could say that improving pace, heart rate, or muscle gains are small things you can evaluate, but they feel cold. And you will have good and bad weeks. If, for a while, I run slower, or the heat makes my heart pound, it’s not a problem. I have a milestone ahead: Finish the next race and, ideally, do it faster than before.

So instead of making my own plan, because that was something that would never happen, I found a personal trainer who knows about running. That was in June 2022. We decided that there was no due date for the marathon or for any of the milestones. Working remotely is something that I truly enjoy, but I created really unhealthy habits, and when the lockdowns started, they didn’t improve at all. I was extremely out of shape, and I didn’t know this at that moment, but I was stressed and sleep-deprived.

It took a few months to feel ready for a race. Or that was what we thought. I didn’t know how to communicate my progression in the training. I was overweight—78 kg for a 173cm guy—and I overtrained without really knowing it. In fact, I didn’t know you could overtrain at all.

September 2022, a nightly 10k along the coast. Earlier in the week, I had a weird pain in my left leg around the internal part of the calf while attending a training session at the gym with my girlfriend. She wanted to attend a class, and I went with her. Outside my training plan, without talking with my trainer, without removing or modifying my sessions.

And I did what every stupid person would do: I ran with it. That became a periostitis in my left leg. But, hey, I finished it. 59:23.

I was not able to get rid of it for months. Then I raced again on December 31, 2022, a shorter distance. And the pain came back. I stopped running for the first half of 2023 to recover properly. It might look like a lot of time, but keep in mind that I wasn’t able to walk without pain for two months. I really screwed up my leg. I should have used this time to do strength training, but I didn’t. My trainer set a plan, but I was mentally exhausted, so I decided to call it and take a break. That was a mistake. Reasonable, but a mistake nonetheless.

Summer 2023: I started running again.

I need to admit that up to this point, running was something I was doing because I thought it was good for me, but I wasn’t truly enjoying it. Then, one day, I ran 12km without any goal in mind at an easy pace on a nice rainy morning. And something clicked. I was alone, across a walking path, surrounded by mountains. I loved every second of it.

Suddenly, instead of running because I wanted to be fitter, I wanted to be fitter to feel something like that day. I wanted to be fitter to run.

I slowly started to fix my sleep patterns (oh boy, there was a lot to fix here), I did blood tests (vitamin D was really low), and I took care of my eating habits. The classic stuff: tracking calories and protein, stopping drinking coffee around noon, going to bed earlier, quitting social media completely, and starting to read books on a daily basis. These two last things might not be really related to health, but somehow I can feel they changed my mental energy for the better.

I started again with the trainer and added Pilates to the equation. 3 running sessions, 2 Pilates classes and 1 strength session per week.

I moved from 78kg to 70kg in a few months. The scale freaked out. Abs are now a thing.

Ran several 5k and 10k. My best times are 23:20 for the 5k and 47:48 for the 10k. Nothing fancy; there is still a lot of work to do, but I didn’t start to run because I wanted to win races.

Running is not a habit anymore. I made running a hobby, and I am looking for it every single week. I now organize my week around running.

Enough with the melodramatic backstory; let’s train. See you in a week.