akrish

My alarm went off at six AM and I immediately shot out of bed. I’m usually a pretty early riser, but for a college student, six on a Sunday was definitely too early. Yet I was awake and alert, excited for the race I would be running in just a couple of hours. I quickly showered, ate a couple pieces of toast, and jogged to Kroeber Fountain, where all the racers from running club had arranged to meet. We waited there for a bit for our drivers to arrive; I was excited and nervous, ready to start running.

The Banana Chase 5K/10K started at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, so we drove over there, checked in, and relaxed while waiting for the rest of the team. By way of warm-up, we jogged some of the course, returned to the stadium and stretched, chatted and mentally prepared ourselves. Most people on the team were pretty serious. As for me, I was just excited to be running in a race. I wanted to do well, but it was irrelevant what time I got. The race started at nine AM, so around then we jogged up to the starting line, ready to get things under way.

The race was over pretty quickly (I ran the 5K), but I really enjoyed those 20 minutes. We ran near and in Golden Gate Park, which is a tranquil area of San Francisco, so the route was awesome. Even though it was just 3 miles, I ran it pretty hard (it was a race after all), so I was exhausted afterwards. I was happy with my time, for my first race it was quite good (and vacuously a PR!). More importantly though, I had a lot of fun just being there and taking part in such an event with so many people.

I haven’t been involved in competitive sports for a couple of years, and I realized that I miss the adrenaline and anxiety of athletic competition. Sunday was a great reminder of that, but it was a little different than the soccer matches I used to compete in. First off, here it’s entirely individual, but there are so many people around you, that I got a sense of camaraderie rather than competition. At the same time, I was still energized to compete. On the whole though, it was amazing to see so many different people participating in the race, and it has motivated me to keep training in a race more often.

The Banana Chase was essentially my first race (I did cross country in middle school), and I loved it. Hanging out with the running club was really fun, I enjoyed seeing so many people warming up, socializing, and running, and of course, the actual run was really good too. I’m working on building up my distance, so hopefully my next couple of races will be longer, but this was definitely a good start.

If you’re interested in the race results, they’re here.

Summer’s a great time to do all the things you’ve been wanting to do, but haven’t found time to do during the year. In my case, one of those things was regular, high-intensity exercise. Coming into the summer, I did what I do every year: I said I would devote my summer to serious exercise and try to develop a more regular exercise routine for myself. Every summer before this one, I’d exercise a couple of times, but I’d always get caught up in everything else going on, and undoubtedly working out would get put on the back burner. Something changed this summer, and I actually managed to start running and working out on a regular basis.

At the beginning of summer, I took my brother’s advice and set monthly exercise goals for myself. They were ridiculously ambitious, but it was motivation for me to strive to meet and surpass them. I also decided that since I wouldn’t have that much time to exercise (I’m working full time over the summer), I’d have to make the most of each workout and do very high-intensity activities. I started running on a regular basis, and eventually I’ve built the habit of running at least four or five times a week. It’s gotten to the point where I enjoy running and I actually look forward to my runs each day.

I used to run a bit during high school, but it was only as supplementary training for soccer, and I never really enjoyed it. Now however, I run for the sake of running, and I want to build up my performance so that I can start racing. The hopes of racing and competing is amazing motivation and really helps me push myself during my runs. I also really want to run a marathon in the near future, so I think of every workout as a step towards achieving that goal.

So what made this summer different from all the other ones? I think one of the biggest things is that I’m older and a lot more determined. I’m a lot better at following through with my goals and actually doing the things I set out to do. It also helped that I wrote down my exercise goals for the summer, and I look at them every once in awhile to re-motivate myself. It’s also a lot easier to make exercising a habit, when you have a daily routine that you can just incorporate your workouts into. For me, I had work every day, so I would go running every day before work (also before it got to hot outside). Compared to the last few summers, when I didn’t have to wake up at the same time every day, it was a lot easier to make running a part of my schedule when my schedule was already well defined. The last thing, and I don’t know how much of a factor this was, but one of the other interns at work is a marathon runner, and he has really inspired me to train. When I look back on how different this summer was from the previous ones, it’s easy to understand why I’ve been able to train so consistently.

Once you make running a habit, it’s actually really easy to get better and keep it up. I’ve been really happy with my improvement, and it just motivates me to run even more. One of the most important things, though, is that if I stop for even one day, it becomes really hard for me to start up again. So last week, I didn’t run at all until Thursday, because I took a day off the week before. On that Thursday, I decided to just go out for a slow run just to get back into things, and now, I’m back into my regular training schedule. Even if I go for a short or slow run, just running every day makes it so much easier to motivate myself.

When school starts in about a week, everything is going change. For one, my life isn’t going to be so nicely scheduled. On top of that, I’m going to have a lot more work outside of class, and finding time to exercise is going to be a lot harder. My hope is that I’ve made running enough of a habit that I’ll keep it up during the school year. Looking ahead, as my schedule becomes less rigid, I’m going to have to somehow incorporate running into my daily routine, so that I don’t lose the habit and have to start all over again.