Running again

After the Triathlon at Gay Games 2002 in Sydney, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

I have been out running again since the nice weather we had in February, having had a break for over three years. I think the last run I did was the Amsterdam (Half) Marathon in 2004, or it may have been the Zevenheuvelenloop a few weeks later in Nijmegen. Anyway, I stopped and never really got going again, having had problems with my knees, then my back and then my self-confidence...

As I meant to say, when I wrote this post, I ran in a local run, the Nescio Loop, organised by my old club AV '23, the run going from the athletics club to the Amsterdam-Rijn Canal, where we go over an 800 meter long 20 meter high bridge - The Nescio Bridge, a bridge moreover which is only for pedestrians and cyclists and which links Diemen and East Amsterdam to the new suburbs of Ijburg, built on the new islands in the Ijsselmeer.

I have been running for about two months, first by myself and then with a club - this time the DGLA, which trains at the AV ' 23 track near me on a Wednesday and at the Olympic Stadium on a Friday. It is a very friendly club and the trainers, Ciska on a Wednesday and Leo on a Friday are both very good, which is important. Just like at AV '23 we do some jogging to warm up, then a number of body exercises and then running exercises before starting on some interval training over a distance of between 5 and 6 kms. At AV '23, they almost always came out at 5.2 kms.

So, having had this training for the past 3-4 weeks, I felt like doing a proper run and this was a very appropriate start...a nd it all went very well. I started off fairly slowly and then found an old running mate, who I always used to 'beat' and ran along with him for a while, until we were at the top of the bridge on the way back, where I thought I could start running a bit faster... and so I did... keeping going, overtaking the people in front and doing a sprint at the end to come back in a time of 36 minutes 42 seconds, about which I was very pleased. More pleased however, that it all went well, without any pain or injuries. And they were offering 10 minute sport massages at the end for just 5 euros, so I had someone massage my shins which had me walking away as fresh as could be... now onto the next run...