Running like a child

Today I saw my children doing it again: running for the fun of it. They weren't running because they wanted to go somewhere, but just because. Because running feels natural, because it feels good.

When I see the children running around like that I always wonder when I lost that feeling. Nowadays I run because I'm in a hurry, because I have to do the laundry, because I'm out of potatoes and I have to go and get some and the clock is ticking.

I blame high school! All those obligatory rounds running around the parc, where I always ended up last. Ok, there was one girl who was even slower, but she was very overweight. So that doesn't count.

To me the feeling of running like a child is captured in the intro of the series The Little House on the Prairie, where the Ingalls children bounce through the prairie.

So next time I go for a run I'll just imagine I'm Laura Ingalls running through the corn with sexy Michael Landon lookin down at me.

The ending of something old, the beginning of something new

Now that I've succesfully completed my 10K program I feel strangely lost. What do I do now?

It's a bit like the feeling you get as a mom, when you and your children enter a new phase of their development. Gone are the familiar routines, and you have to find your way again. When your youngest starts preschool for example. Suddenly you find yourself with a lot of free time on your hands, and no where to put it!
Not to mention the moment when your children leave the nest. They don't call it the Empty Nest Syndrome for nothing.

But just like a running programme that ends, the end of a phase in your life as a mom offers the opportunity for something new, something different.

So I've decided to build on my 10K accomplisments and go and train for a 10 miler, and you can do the same as a mom. Everything you've learned from being a mom, you can use to build something new!

You go mom!

Good luck!

My training to run 10 kilometer in 60 minutes is almost finished. Just one more training to do, in which I have to run for three minutes and than walk for one. According to myasics my fitness level has soared to a dizzying level of a 100, and my fitness curve reaches for the sky. What has struck me the most during this training programma is my much improved pace.

But, not once during the training program did I have to run 10 kilometers. And yet myasics tells me to go and run a race, and cheerfully wishes me 'Good luck'. But how do I know I can do something, if I've never actually practised it!

It's a lot like giving birth and motherhood: you prepare, you read the books and you train, but you can't practice the actual event.

So in the end there really isn't anything left to say but: Good luck!