Saturday, April 25, 2009

...Go!

False start!
I was all ready to go: shoes, pants, shirt, charged iPod nano and the nike+ sensor on my shoes.
My first run was somewhat postponed thanks to some copyright barons in Belgium. See, one Belgian lady made some really nice mp3 series with the appropriate name 'start to run'. Seems to me people wanted it to be found. Anyway, I was planing to start running with the aid of this program since I heard and read much good about it. However some copyright club had tried to make these mp3's disappear from the web exactly now. On any other day I would have found it amusing how these naive and ignorant people keep trying to make information disappear from a global network that was designed to be able to share information even during an all out nuclear war. They must have gotten high from the news of the verdict on the Pirate Bay people.


But, ha-ha, the pirates have got the wind back in their sails with the not so surprising news that the judge was waist deep in the industry himself. So mateys find ye treasure here, harrrrrrr...

When I thought I had everything, I walked to my battlegrounds for my first run. A nice calm area with huge manors, embassies and stretches of parks leading to dunes and beaches. Meanwhile I was fiddling on the iPod to start both a new training on my nike+ and listen to the mp3. Unfortunately, it turned out that I need to make a playlist since it did not allow me to select the mp3 file which has been branded by iTunes as a podcast. Great. So my first run was one without statistics, but maybe thats actually a good thing...

The first few minutes were obviously too hard. I ran out of breath rather quickly and feared the side pains and all other discomforts I associated with running would follow up soon. But then another runner came jogging by, she looked experienced in running for some reason, probably the flashy stretch clothes. But she was going way slower. So I decided I'd better turn it down a bit. After that, while still being a good workout, the run was smooth.

Because I had no idea what distance I would cover during the first run, I did not plan out a route. It became a somewhat ad-hoc run with twists and turns. Sometimes I would need to backtrack a bit because I reached a dead end or would wind up on a sand track and stuff like that. I had no idea when I would be half-way and what would be a good time to head back. This all resulted in me being finished with the first exercise in somewhat unknown territories. I was a bit lost, and needed to walk quite a bit to get back home. Maybe that's actually good for cooling down, or maybe I should just pick one of the many other parks which are within reach, or just bike to one of them...
All in all, it was a good first run but much, much progress can and will be made!

1 comment:

  1. Great run! As the Belgian lady will tell you on multiple occasions in the future, it is not about the speed, it is about doing the distance.

    Getting to know your running arena in real life or through google maps part of the fun of running. It will also allow you to track the distance of your run (allowing you to check the calibration on your Nike+)

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