This isn’t a story of an athletic kid, who was a member of various school sports clubs and just couldn’t wait for those favourite PE classes. It’s a story of a girl, who had panic attacks only by thinking about any physical activity and who absolutely hated sports at school. It’s my story.
Throughout every stage of my school life I was the last to be chosen for any team and I felt bad that I couldn’t even force myself to run 400m without stopping. It’s not that I was overweight or lazy. I was just one of those kids who weren’t introduced to physical activity from the early stages. I used to be more of an artistic, geeky type, who went to music school, art classes and visited theatre a few times a month.
I only managed to learn to ride a bike when I was about 13, which was a reason for some to pick on me. Trying to learn it as a kid with my grandpa promising me that he’s still holding on to a stick never worked for me. I always knew he wasn’t and this made me fall over and over again. I’ve never learned to properly swim either. My parents signed me up for some swimming lessons when I was about 12. When we started jumping into deep water, I mean 2 meters deep, I used to literally recite every single prayer I knew, while looking at the clock waiting for the lesson to finish and sneakily letting others take my place in the queue. I’ve been following sports for about 15 years but even this didn’t change my attitude towards training. It scared me to death.
When I started studying at the University, I joined the gym for the first time and was introduced to all the equipment and training programmes. I started doing a little bit of sport but very irregularly. It’s only after I came back from my Sochi 2014 adventure I’ve realised it was time to do something about my fitness. Well, after spending two months eating potatoes, pancakes, pasta and pasties for every meal with little vegetables and probably no fruit at all (yes, that was our diet in Sochi, which was very tasty but c’mon!) and absolutely no physical activity apart from watching sports (does that count??) you can expect results.
So I’ve become quite regular at the gym but to STAY regular you need to set yourself some goals. For me becoming fit just wasn’t good enough so I decided to face one of my biggest weaknesses and definitely the most hated activity – RUNNING. I signed up for an obstacle race with an aim to raise money for a local cats rescue. I gave myself about 6 months to build up on my running progress raising the distance on a weekly basis. Back then I used to run on a treadmill only starting from something stupid, such as 1km probably. Week by week I was raising it by 0.5km so in April last year while my partner was taking part in Derby 10k I decided to take on the 3km fun run. I know this sort of distance isn’t a lot for a person who runs regularly but back then it was a big challenge for me.
In October 2016 I was ready to complete the 5km obstacle race. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Made me cry and laugh and challenged both my physical and mental strength on every single level but more on this in a separate post.
2017 goals
- 150 trainings – This includes all running sessions, but also any other activity I’ll take on.
- 10k race – even though last year I said I won’t be doing anything longer than 5k…Only one month to go!
- 10k obstacle race – I loved it and I want more!
If somebody had said to me that these will be my goals in the future I’d have burst out laughing. Not because I didn’t want to have any sport goals but because I found sport very complicated in general. It’s hard, I won’t lie it isn’t, but it’s gives so much satisfaction and positive energy that it’s impossible to stop now. Good luck in achieving your goals!
