The other evening I ran my life's first 5 km. Let me write down the experience for posterity. First off - here is my map of the run from Strava. The original information was captured on my Garmin Forerunner 15, which was synced to Strava. That might sound too much of technology to many :-) But you can easily ignore that bit and not miss anything.
I was running some 4 km more or less consistently for the last few weeks before this. On this particular evening I thought I would give 5K a try. Perhaps walk for a few hundred meters and then run again. I shall not save the run at 4K on my Garmin. As it turned out, I did not hear the beep at 4 km. When I looked at my watch it was showing 4.11 km. I stopped running but kept on walking. I was quite out of breath actually. This was on the other side of the Lake.
After walking for 200 meters I felt strong enough to run again. The heart beat per second had also come down considerably. So I started again in right earnest to stop only after hitting 5K. This part of the run was not as tough as I had imagined it might be. I could have gone on for some more distance perhaps. But then one has to remember the knees and other ligaments that may not keep pace with my enthusiasm :-)
I have noticed that on holidays and weekends, after a full day's rest when I run in the evening I do better - both in terms of distance and speed. On certain bad humid and breeze less, working days I can barely run for 2 kms.
My timing wasn't anything great. But I know I can bring it down in winter. Or perhaps in the morning also. I am not worried about that. My best timing over 4 km so far is 27 minutes. I think I clocked that some time in December 2015. Which is a little less than 7 min per km pace. I am sure with consistent practice it will come down to perhaps 6 min per km. But the tragedy is that every day I am getting old and getting slower. A classic case of running to stand still :-)
I must explain here why there is such a long gap between this entry and the previous one. Last year from January onwards I was getting bogged down by one after the other ailments that did not let me run. Finally I went to Chadar trek in late January and broke my wrist. This virtually put an end to my running. It may sound funny. But it indeed is impossible to be in a frame of mind to run when your wrist is recovering from a one-month long cast.
It took me quite a few months to come out of that phase and start to run again. I built up the distance slowly but steadily. Now I am trying to run 4 km every alternate evening. But I must admit on certain bad days I do finish the evening at 2 km. Of course I am not counting the 1+1 km walk to and from home to the starting point.
