My Journey With Weight Loss – Survived A 10 KM

I was a little surprised this morning that there were so many runners on the promenade. By 7am I had said hello to about a dozen runners which is really unusual for that time of day. A couple of them were ones that I see regularly but most I hadn’t seen before. I guess with it being Saturday and the rain easing off a lot of people decided to take advantage of it. Strange thing though, there were far less walkers than I normally see.

Today was the run I had been dreading all week, a 10 km. Coach had told me that if it felt too difficult to just do an 8 km but while I got ready I became more and more determined that I was going to do this. As they were predicting heavy rain this morning I layered up with my moisture wicking run jacket over which I put my water resistant running jacket (my husband loves that jacket as it has all sorts of reflective stripes). As I headed out the front door I realized it was a little chilly so put on some gloves. I got started on my run and realized it actually wasn’t raining so I became a bit hopeful that I would get through this while staying dry.

I was a few blocks into the run when I realized I had forgotten my Airpods. I decided instead of going back to get them I would just do some thinking. The problem with this was with so much going on it was hard to focus on a particular topic so my mind was spinning most of the time. By about the start of the 3rd km I was starting to get warm so off came the gloves and I opened the vents in jacket and was pretty happy that I was still dry. I will note at about the 5th km the wind was gusting for a bit so had to zip everything back up again only to reverse the process again a few minutes later. Once I was through the halfway point I realized I was going to make it to the end.

I have mentioned before that I like to count down the blocks in the segments I have run. Segments are basically broken down into when I make a turn. The second to last segment is the longest at 8 blocks and 4 of those are up an incline with the 1st 2 blocks being pretty steep. By time I got to that segment I was telling my self, get through these 4 blocks and the rest is easy (ok, I really need to reconsider my definition of easy). It didn’t seem long until I turned to start the last segment which is only 3 blocks. Those blocks took what seemed like forever to finish but I did it! Oh, and I was still dry.

So how do I feel after running my first 10 km in over a month? Well, I feel great! The rubber toe sock apparently has done the trick as I have no more pain in my toe. After a few days of using my anti-inflammatory cream my quads are no longer angry at me. I think I am pretty well back to where I was when I ran my first 10 km. I should note, while I hadn’t run in over month I was still walking 6 days a week which helped keep my muscles strong.

I’ve decided that I am not even going to look at that month that I had to take off as a setback because it wasn’t. I did the right thing by listening to the doctor but found ways to minimize any loss in my fitness level. I can say it worked after having run a 5 km, 8 km and 10 km over the past week. Now I know I am fully back at it.