I achieved my goal.
Right at about four months of giving it a go, I accomplished a feat I didn’t think I would ever be doing, at least not this quickly.
I was able to bust out a half-hour 5K just a few days ago. That’d been then goal since I started this lifestyle transformation on Easter.
I’ve not ran since, a sort of pseudo-celebration, as well as a bit of extra recovery time since my ankle was kind of bugging me. But hey, it’s about time to stop enjoying the deed and get back to doing what got me there in the first place. And that’s just running.
I wasn’t going to go for it at first. I started a half-mile at 5mph, which has become a pretty common and easy thing for me to pull off (which is crazy to read and know is true) and went to bump that up to 6.2mph.
6.2 has been my target speed for a while now. I know that half an hour at that speed would be a 30-minute 5K. As such, I’d given myself tastes of it here and there, usually to the tune of .6 miles. Sounds weird, but there’s a method to the madness. If I manage that, I’m at 1.1 miles ran, which means there’s two left and I can figure out from there how long it’ll take me to finish. At 5mph, that’s 24 minutes for two more miles, for example. I just know that.
But I was feeling pretty good for some reason when I was running at 6.2, so I figured hey, let’s keep at it. Let’s go for a mile at this speed. Now, I’ve never ran that fast for that long before. The one time I did run a mile at that speed, it was just that and I was done. By the way that’s a 9:40 mile, if you were wondering.
A lot of my running involves me trying to zone out and lose myself in the music that I’ve got going, a nice little Spotify playlist that I’ve called Run to me, which mostly consists of EDM and techno and things like that. You know, fast tempo, high beats per minute songs that you can’t help but want to run fast to. It’s hard to go slow when Pendulum is screaming that IT’S THE RISE OF THE VULTURE.
The other part of my running is watching the clock and doing mental math, trying to figure out what my pace is and if I’m able to beat a ghost in that particular run. And this time, I could. I absolutely could. I was feeling nice and thinking I could beat it by, at least, 20 or 30 seconds if I slowed back down after my mile at 6.2.
But I also realized that I could keep going and this could be it. This could be the unicorn. I might not have a better shot at ever catching that dang thing. So, I kept going. Kept running at 6.2 after the mile and glanced down at my clock, noticing the time and trying to figure out the math.
6.2 wasn’t going to cut it though, so I had to bump up the speed and try to figure out that math. And running at 6.6 is not something I usually do. Especially not while trying to do number puzzles in my head. For example, I was running and trying to figure out, at about 2.1 miles ran in total, so not a lot of time left, what a speed of 7mph would get me. I knew that I’d go seven miles in an hour, three and a half in 30 minutes and like, 1.75 in 15. So that’s about .88 in seven and a half?
All while running. Wound up maxing out at 7.6 for a little more than a quarter-mile. It was awful!
But crossing the finish line at 30:02 (every picture I took shows :03 but that’s because I couldn’t slow it down fast enough) was an amazing feeling. And I got to catch my breath for a whole 2:22 before my ghost ever caught up to me.
But that’s the physical part of my life.
I’m also going to get better at the writing part of my life. I kind of fell flat last week and skipped putting an Adventure up. That’s not from a lack of writing, but rather an issue with figuring out what I even was writing and where it was going.
I couldn’t figure out what this story was about or trying to say. It felt really, I don’t know, meaningless, I guess. In the most literal sense of that word.
Sorry for not giving a heads up or explanation for its absence until now. I will do better in the future. Current goal is to double up on the Adventure, which would mean a back-to-back posting on consecutive Saturdays before getting back to the every-other-Saturday schedule. As for when that’ll happen, we’ll see. I’d hate to rush something and fall into the same pitfall I fell into just then.
It’s kind of funny though. It wasn’t really until my last re-read of my story that I finally realized what it was about. Leaned back in my chair, left hand up near my face, index finger tucked in that space between my chin and lower lip. It hit me.
-Wait! This is a story about this, isn’t it?!
I’d written over 2,000 words and not figured out what the heck was even going on. That’s not too terribly unusual, but I hardly ever get that far with just lip service. But I’m glad I know what I’m trying to do with that story now and I think it’ll be a lot of fun for you all to read.
And I can’t spoil what it’s going to be about, obviously. Mostly because I want that left up to my readers. Plenty of writers can tell you what a particular story is about, but it’s up to the reader to determine if that’s true. Not to say that the writer is lying to you, but sometimes what they think it’s about and what the reader thinks it’s about are two different things.
A great example of that is probably Flannery O’Connor’s short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find. I don’t know that she ever said, “Hey, this is about this,” but I remember debating what it was about in college several different times.
Good story. You all might like it. Maybe. It was, uh, probably not as influential to me as Joyce Carol Oates’ story Where Are You Going, Where Have you Been was (actually I know it wasn’t that influential, nothing beats that one), but it really left an impression on me. I really enjoy literary realism. It’s good stuff.
Hope you’ll stick with me for some additional stories, both Adventures and Storyganks. Who knows, maybe I’ll introduce a whole ‘nother concept to this website before too long.
Thanks for reading!