I recently ran 21 kilometres (K) without any running training.
I work out at the gym on a regular basis but have never run this far. The furthest I've run is 10K, which was over a year ago.
Everyone asks me why I did that, and I really just wanted to see if my body could handle it. I wanted to know what it was like to run for that long.
It was more difficult than I thought, both mentally and physically. My body was in quite a bit of pain, so I went through any process I'd recommend to an athlete of healing from salt bath, to nutrition, stretching and more.
Having preached “living a healthy lifestyle”, I wanted to see if my body would recover quickly enough for another long run. So later, I went out and ran another 10K.
Again, it was not so easy, but I got through it and was able to better understand the stress we put on our body, as well as healing and recovering as quickly as possible.
My inspiration was two family members that have had heart issues, along with proving that living a healthy lifestyle will give you the opportunity to do things you otherwise couldn't.
Lastly, I was hoping to inspire a handful of people, given that this is a tough time of year for motivation. With New Year's in the rear-view mirror and everyone looking forward to warmer weather, this is usually the slowest time of year for people making health changes.
Drew Taddia
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