A total of 9 months into training…

Part 1 of 17

A total of 9 months into training and I did my first 10k and I also did 5k under 25 mins. Yayyyy

Part 2 of 17

My schedule was like this:
Sunday: Long runs
Tuesday: Tempo runs
Thursday: Easy runs
Saturday: 400m Sprints

Since along with running my body I also had to run a company 🥲
I figured I can manage to take out 1 hour every day in the early morning like 7am ish. the excitement to wake up early for run also fixed my sleep

Part 3 of 17

The only aim from this point of time was to always do better than the last run. Sometimes distance or sometimes pace

Part 4 of 17

Sometimes if I wasn’t able to wake up early and had to do in the evening, it didn’t work well for me. I terribly failed in doing better than the last run. I think empty stomach runs are the best for me and since then I always preferred mornings even more

Part 5 of 17

I started signing up for 5k, 10k marathons and they were extremely fun

Part 6 of 17

Music helped in the early days but then the beat frequency started to affect my pace and efficiency. I got easily tiered after many fluctuations in the pace, that’s when I shifted to @EndelSound

Part 7 of 17

Runs with @EndelSound are too good. The constant sync between the freshly baked music and my heartbeat made sure I am running at consistent pace. This was a major stepping stone to do longer runs like 21k

Part 8 of 17

For consistent pace, I also used another hack: sometimes while doing strength training, I’d do a 20 min treadmill run on only one pace (a faster one)

Part 9 of 17

I also noticed a weird pattern, the days I was not aiming for a personal best were the days I did achieve them 😅
Here are my PBs for 5k, 10k and 21k

Part 10 of 17

Also, I wanted to mention that there were many days I didn’t feel like going for a run. Whenever there were enough challenges already on my plate from work/ personal, I couldn’t find the energy to go for a run. Earlier, I used to be disappointed, but later I made peace with it.

Part 11 of 17

I was able to make peace because I understand the concept of stress+rest = growth or the balance of pain and pleasure. @WHOOP also helped measure it daily. I also made sure once I had enough rest, I went back and worked harder for my runs.

Part 12 of 17

I ran/walked 362/730 days, which is not ideal but good enough. There were weeks I simply couldn’t go for a single run, and the longest gap between two runs was 14 days. What I learnt the most is that it’s not important to run every day but to run when you can

Part 13 of 17

Also, the photo I posted is from my first 5k under 21 mins. I am also wearing headphones, which were helpful then, but now I enjoy runs without them. It was just the best running picture I had 😅

Part 14 of 17

Hope this is helpful in your running journey ✌️

Part 15 of 17

One more learning I just remembered: Breathing through nose was what everyone recommended but it was very difficult. In the beginning I stopped caring about it and only focused on doing distance but gradually I improved upon by breathing. Now I think I do 60% nose and 40% mouth

Part 16 of 17

also I quickly moved from cemented roads to muddy tracks because my knee used to hurt, only later after it was used to with running longer distances on soft tracks I could go for longer road runs

Part 17 of 17

without good sleep/ 70+ recovery, the runs weren't that good