Going back about three years or so, I felt that I needed to do some form of exercise. I work in a busy sales office all day, sat behind a desk and a computer. Then I was going home, cooking and eating my dinner, maybe doing a few chores, and then after dinner I would sit down and watch the television for the rest of the evening. So I wasn't getting any exercise.
I like my food, I enjoy cooking and baking too, so consequently I was piling on the pounds and feeling very sluggish. But not only that, my body was beginning to ache. I would get up out of bed in the morning and my back wouldn't bend far enough for me to bend over so that I could put my socks on. Dressing was a real struggle. Once I'd been up and active for an hour though I was OK.
I would occasionally go for a long walk at weekends but by the time I had reached six or seven miles, my hips were beginning to ache, and by nine miles I was in agony. Something had to be done otherwise in ten years time I would be struggling to do anything, and I didn't want that. So I needed to be able to do some form of activity that I could do on my own or, as part of a group.
C25K & Parkrun
One Saturday morning I was eating my breakfast whilst watching the BBC Breakfast news program, and they featured a story about something called Parkrun, where people met up in parks and other town/city venues at 9 AM every Saturday morning to take part in a FREE 5 km (3 miles) timed run, and I thought to myself that this was maybe what I needed. So I went on line and found the Parkrun website. I found my local Parkrun, which takes place at Tredegar House in Newport and so I went along on the following Saturday.
I arrived at Tredegar House and there seemed to be hundreds of people there, of all ages, shapes and sizes, wearing T shirts, shorts and trainers. I spotted a hand made sign on a post saying, Beginners Here and so I went over to join the small group of people stood there. A grey haired chap, who was very lean and looked like a seasoned runner spoke to me and told me this was week five of a nine week couch to 5 km course, (C25K), to get people into running from having never run, to be able to run the 5 km Parkrun course, non stop, but I was welcome to join them, and that is exactly what I did.
Me being a Parkrun tourist at Crawley, W Sussex
I completed the rest of the course and I was going to Parkrun on every Saturday that I could, but I now needed another challenge. That same grey haired man mentioned to me that the running club he belonged to, Caerleon Running Club, was running a follow on course to the C25K course, designed to take us from 5 km up to 10 km, as he said that most running clubs require their members to be able to run a 10 km distance in roughly one hour. This felt like a good next step, and I had made a few friends already, so I went along each week, my distance increased until I had reached 10 km, and by which time I had decided to join the club.
Caerleon Running Club on a Parkrun tourist away day at Porthcawl
So my reasons for taking up running were to get more exercise and to aid weight loss. And I think this is probably the motivation for most people. The new January intake of C25K ers is always much larger than the new courses that begin at other times of the year, as people make New Year resolutions to lose weight and get fit, just the same as gym membership rockets in January. I guess others begin running because they know someone else who runs, or they want to raise money for a charity and so they enter something like the cancer charity, Race for Life.
One thing is certain, and that is for many people, running, (especially once a member of a club), can be addictive. We enter a couple of 10 km races and become absorbed in the atmosphere of the event, with the crowds lining the streets, clapping and cheering, the camaraderie of your fellow club mates, and the competitive spirit between them. We hear the stories of more experienced runners who have just completed the latest half or full marathon and are proudly wearing the finishers brightly coloured T shirt. And that spurs us on to push our own boundaries and distances and enter that next, longer race.
Myself and fellow club mates wearing our brightly coloured finishers T Shirts after the Swansea Half Marathon
But it isn't just the distances that we wish to conquer, it is our race finishing times also. For example. When I first completed a full Parkrun, I was doing it in around 35 minutes. By the following autumn, a year later, I had got it down to 27 minutes, and now it is a few seconds over 26 minutes, and I'm sure that will come down further. My 10 km times started out at 1 hour 9 minutes, and I have now have a personal best of 53 minutes. We all seem to feel the need to improve speed and distance, to a point anyway.
Now, I still have a few aches and pains, (which I'm putting down to my age), but I get very little hip pain and, most importantly, I can easily put my socks on in the morning. Keeping ourselves reasonably fit, (you don't have to run a marathon every month), is very beneficial to our physical and mental health and overall well being. And although we may well complain during a run, (what, another hill?), we all feel better for it afterwards.
Running is cheap, (as long as you don't go overboard registering for lots of races), and it's a great way to meet new people and make new friends, especially if you join a club.
Happy running 😄
Steve
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