In running, or really any sport, take it easy when you come back after a break

This can apply to both cardio and strength training but recently for me it applies to cardio. I realized that over the lockdowns and limited movement that I have gained back some weight due to my normally quite poor diet decisions combined with not being able to do my running penance.

Therefore I decided right out of the gate that I was going to complete 100 km running in the month of November. This is not a big deal for a lot of the people out there that i see that easily do 10k or more any time they run, but it has been for me for a long time. For one thing, I genuinely don't like running but simply do it because it is something that you should do so I suffer through it. Maybe one day I will enjoy it, but that time is not now.

The other day I started back up my cardio routine after a month of almost exclusively weight training since we would until recently get hassled for running without a mask on, which is something I kind of refuse to do.

Let's just say that I broke my own rule when I went on my first run without really any cardio activity for 30 days.

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The thing is for me and most other people we have a certain memory of how fast we are but when you take this long of a break it is really stupid to try to get back out there at the same pace you were doing back when this was a regular part of your life. Yet that is exactly what I did and I paid the price for it.

I don't really even know what I was trying to prove on the first kilometer but it obviously was too hardcore for me as you can tell that my later splits were nowhere near this level. You can see that I got progressively worse as things went on and by the time I got to km number 4 I had basically given up and was doing more walking than running. This is still better than sitting on my sofa and doing nothing but it was a really stupid move on my part and I feel kind of dumb for allowing it to happen.

I think the smarter thing for me to have done would have been to start out with a walk and later have that evolve into a slow, comfortable job but like a jackass, I think I took like 10 steps out of my building before I started running at a far faster pace than I used to run when I was running every single day a month ago. By the time I finished I was a bit frustrated with myself and had given up at that point. Despite the fact that the weather is starting to get a lot cooler where I live, I was also drenched in sweat.

I'm going to have a different approach when I go for my run today and that will be one of what I actually should have done in the first place. Walk, then later run, not the other way around. Then I will do a cooldown walk at the end as well so I don't end up killing myself.

It was a dumb mistake and I already know that this is not the way that it is supposed to be done. Just like a lot of things in life, I know how to give advice to other people and it tends to work, but I am unable to adhere to the same advice for myself.

_{I use Strava to track my progress with running. It is a simple and free app that I think is worth checking out}