I am running again!

After a long period of promising that I'd start running again, I finally started it. And I am literally overjoyed with the result.

It's kind of funny how things start. I had not done any Wii fitness last couple of days and had been thinking about doing some. But then a friend of mine said she's going bicycyling today and I thought, "Hmmmm, maybe I should also go running." The time element between meals happened to be just right so I went. To explain that last remark, I don't go if I have just eaten very recently or if I am hungry already. My performance is very bad in both the cases.

I was so glad I came out, not only was it a glorious day out, I found that I loved how my stamina felt. My circuit follows the major and minor roads around the place where I live, it's about 2.5 miles in total, but I don't run all of it. When I run out of breath or I come to a particularly steep uphill stretch I stop running and start walking.

Even though I carry my GPS-enabled Android phone with BuddyRunner application running on it, my main source of assessing my performance while I am doing it is using a number of checkpoints. Yes, like in a videogame.

The first checkpoint is a set of a traffic lights which is about 0.49 miles from my house. If I go a few steps past them I have done half a mile. I try to do that in one breath i.e. no walking, all running. From those traffic lights the road becomes uphill, with the slope getting steeper. On my best days  I can run up this slope to the next set of traffic lights. Today I managed the half mile mark in one go and carried on to achieve the extended mark (next traffic lights) 0.7 miles. That was so good.

Then there's some level roads that I run and walk based on how out of breath I am. Then an uphill slope again, which gets very steep near the top. My second checkpoint is from the top of this hill. There are all kinds of points where I can stop from here on, but on my best days I can get back to my door without stopping from this point. Today I reached my door!

This is particularly difficult since the last stretch from the main road to my door is all uphill with the slope getting steeper, really steep near my house. But slow and steady I managed to achieve it!

It proves two points. One, biphasic sleep gives you good energy to use in all your activities even with limited hours of sleep. Two, Wii fitness helps to build up your stamina.

Oh, I left out a good bit. I got bibbed on the way! You see, when men are driving and they see a particularly pretty girl, they honk their horn. In English vernacular it's called "bibbing". While I was running on the level part of my circuit (on the footpath), some girl in a car honked at me. I looked to see if it was somebody I knew. It wasn't. Yeah, I know it's shallow. It's shallow of her to honk, and shallow of me to be pleased about it but hey, I consider it my reward for being good and going out running. ;-)