I ran 5K for the first time in my life!

Yesterday I reached a significant milestone. I ran my first 5K!

I’ve always been on the heavy side. I did a lot of weightlifting from age 18 to around 27 and I was always rather bulky, but very strong. This meant I was very good at working in the woods or helping people move house, but I’ve never been able to do any running or endurance because my knees would start protesting very quickly. However, I always admired endurance athletes and I had the desire to be able to run more than a few minutes without feeling the urge to die on the spot.

Over the past 1,5 years I lost 20kg (~44 pounds) so I decided to give it yet another try.

I’ve never been this lightweight so I decided to give running another try. I started small with only 10 minutes but over the course of two months I built it up gradually.

Last week I ran 4km and it felt pretty good, so I just decided to push a little bit more and try for my goal of 5k, and it went well! It feels like quite an accomplishment to me.

Now that I lost all this weight running actually feels good, and it is liberating to discover a whole new area of exercise that I haven’t explored yet: endurance. Looking back to my progress over a couple of months, I’m curious how far I’ll come and what my limits are.