Livenews

I am not scared of you anymore. You are now done intimidating me from the corner, Mikael. Your complicated being has stopped me from approaching you, from touching you, from trying to reach out and understand you. But now I am tired of it, you have lost your spell over me.

For more than a month I avoided you, pretended that you weren’t there. But your piercing eye kept on following me. Touch me, you dared me. Try and figure me out. Once, I tried. Once I tried to look back, but I quickly gave up again, overwhelmed by the explanation of how to figure you out.

But no more! Now, I will not be scared away. I will not stop until I’ve shaped you into what I want. From a two-dimensional being, I will give you a third. No more fear. Yes, my IKEA file cabinet, it’s you and me now. Built you shall be.

Still getting up early (a bit earlier even) and still liking it. The most amazing thing so far is that I hardly have any trouble sleeping anymore. A part of this is probably also because I can’t feel the difference between my right ankle and my left ankle, but I also think it’s because of my drastic change in sleeping pattern. It is pretty crazy if you think about it, I think since I was 18, I could have counted the amount of times I went to bed before midnight on two hands, and now I do it a minimum of five times a week! For the rest, there is no point to this entry, except to document that I am still doing this.

I am a proud to announce that, since I’ve bought the Nike+ running equipment a year and a half ago, I have now ran 1000 kilometers with it!

I’ve been getting up at 6:30 for a while now. A while, no, that sounds better than what it really is. A bit more than a week now. Man, it feels like a lot longer. I’ve been getting up earlier and earlier, for about a month though. That already sounds better! Every morning, I make a little list of three things I want to get done for sure that day. No matter what else I do, if I do those three things, I had a good day. It’s made me study well, it’s made me tackle my administration (if you can call a big pile of unopened envelopes full of trouble ‘administration’), it’s just been making me do a lot of things I don’t feel like doing, but feel great once I do. There are many more things I’d like to do, but I am starting slow.

Why am I doing this. I am doing this because let’s face it, I can be pretty lazy. And I have this view of myself of starting and quitting too many things these past few years. This kind of got me scared of starting anything in the first place, which is both not smart and counterproductive. The thing is, If I could be lazy and actually enjoy it, I might just leave it at that. But I am not good at that. I’ve seen lazy people, being terribly happy doing what they’re doing (not doing) and I admire them, in a way. But it’s not for me, I get all kinds of Calvinistic guilt, all kinds of ‘you’re wasting your life’ feelings. And that has made me terribly down, more than I’d care to admit. This is why I am trying to change bits and pieces in my day to day life.

Why like this. Because of an article in Time Magazine, which had a list of the 25 best blogs in the world. One of them was ZenHabits.net. I’ve been reading this site for maybe a year or something from time to time, and early January, I decided to do something with it. Not everything on this website is for me (I would rather cut all my toenails way too short than become a vegan, and I am not trying to de-stress my life, I am actually looking to stress it a little bit), but I like the ideas on many points.

Why am I writing all this down. For one, I haven’t really told a lot of people about this, because I have been feeling a little stupid and self-helpy, and I now decided that there is no need for that. Also, because I am afraid that this is something I’ll do now and quit again, so I thought it better not to tell, so only myself and a few others know of my newest failure I’ve now decided this is silly too. I also decided to write about it because I am a little proud of the beginning I made, and I am aware that this is only a beginning. Maybe writing about it can help me to keep going.

In the words of the late George Carlin: ‘I have no ending for this, so I’ll just take a bow.’

But then I stand there, before coming out, music pounding, people watching, and I notice I am sweating. And it’s not warm. All this tough talk about how easy it is, but in the end I am still a wussy on a runway.

It’s been done in a minimal amount of time, so not quite perfect or polished, but just a quick impression of a special experience, the half a marathon on the last day of last year.

HalfAnM

Some stats are missing. Okay, maybe a lot of stats are missing. But not as many as should be missing, really. I had a massive cold for about a week, which stopped me from running for two weeks. Somehow that made more sense when it happened. Also my brother isn’t exactly feeling 100% with pain in his heel and a cold. So the preparation these past weeks have not been how we would have wanted, but it doesn’t matter anymore, the half a marathon is tomorrow morning at 11 in the morning. The woohoo-nerves started this morning, and now I can’t wait anymore. Also it’s going to be nice for it to be done, it’s been quite an intense and time-intensive training for the past three months. I had all these plans of running under a certain time, trying to be this and that much faster than my brother, but it’s all out the window. Tomorrow will be about getting to the finish line. That’s all. The only way I’ll stop is when my ankle would tell me to. But how it’s been these months, I am not worried. Wow! That is a stupid thing to say.

If I said it’s been easy today, I am lying. A lot. It’s been my longest and my toughest run so far. Actually, the first time that I wasn’t sure if I was going to finish. The first 12k were going so well, then I made the mistake of eating something, to get some energy. It threw off my breathing, and it gave me massive pains in both sides. I tried slowing down to get my rhythm back, but nothing worked. So 7k more I had to go on, just wishing for the end. I would like to write more about it, but right now, I am horizontal and still not feeling good, even though the run ended hours ago. My brother, the other one (not the one training with me for the half an m) is better with computers than I am, and he is going to create a nice-looking graph of the weeks’ runs. What I can tell you is that it’s been the toughest so far, and that I ran 45k in one week. No wonder I’m ready to be horizontal for a while.

I’ve been back in Italy for a while, and I’ve somehow not been too lazy to run, but I have been too lazy to write down all the times. But here we go, summaries of weeks 3-6.Week III:3km: 16,27min10km: 58,21min (to Brunate)16km: 1h22minTotal: 29km in 2h36,48Week IV:5km: 24,32min11km: 53,31min18,1km: 1h39,57minTotal: 34,1km in 2h58min.WeekV:11km: 52,10min11,6km: 1hoo,13min18,2km: 1h36minTotal: 40,8km in 3h28,59minWeek VI:11.1km: 51,14min (with a new record on the 10km: 45:32!)+-8km: +-45 min (couldnt find my NikePlus stuff)11km: 53,51min4,75km: 22,36 minTotal:34,85km in +- 2h50minI still have a 16k to go for today, but I pulled some kind of muscle somewhere between my armpit and my chest, which makes breathing a bit difficult at the moment, so I’ll have to let that one go, which is okay, since I was a bit behind in my schedule anyway.  So now Week VII begins. I’ll try to hold on to the schedule 100% from here. I’m just hoping this muscle pain will be gone tomorrow. Grrr why my enter button doesn’t work on LiveNews is a big questionmark. I’ll ask if Ewout can fix it.

We met for the first time yesterday. After some introductions, and after you finished your meal we sat down and got to know each other a bit. We had a good talk, or rather, I held a bit of a monologue, and you seemed to agree with me. Until you poked yourself in the eye, and then seemed determined to figure out who just did that to you. Then you fell asleep. Who can blame you. It’s a lot to take in when you’re fourteen hours old. Welcome to life, my new friend. Len Hordijk is born. I am a proud uncle.