There’s a lot to be said about running through the pain, not giving up, endurance, etc. But my priorities are clear, my health and family on top, my job, running, and everything else after. I cannot take chance on my health especially now that I have a kid. If not for the painful feet and weakened immune system, I would have run. But last Wednesday, I had to leave work at lunchtime because of a splitting headache.

So I chose to rest, recuperate and go back to the basic, slow build-up.

Am I disappointed? A little. But that’s life. You can plan everything beforehand but circumstances change all the time and if you don’t want to get stressed, you’d be flexible.

It was a beautiful day today, cold but not freezing, a bit of blue sky, no wind and no rain. My feet were not as painful as I expected it would. I did proper stretching after and some core exercises. If I want to race next month, I had to pay more attention to my core. Maybe a flatter abs would not be that bad after all.

When I started running, I bought the first pretty shoes I saw on sale, a pair of purple Asics. But after consulting a podiatrist (the feet doctor), I was diagnosed as overpronator, thus needed very expensive inserts, and my Asics were for neutral runners. I didn’t use the inserts again after the first marathon because I eventually found the right shoes, the Nike Air Zoom Structure. I’ve stick with it ever since and now on my third pair.

But shoes, no matter how good they’re built, crumble under the pounding of hundreds of training kilometers. I usually change shoes after one marathon but I (wrongly) assumed that mine could last another round of training. Amateur mistake!

Day 20 New Year’s not so easy
I was so happy to see the average pace at the end of the run. My goal was to run this one hour training under the 7somethingkm/hour I’ve been too comfortable with the last few runs. I’ve been stressing about finishing at least in 2hrs:15mins because who wants to be last in a race, right? I added a 1-min “explosive” run before I stopped my watch and couldn’t be happier with the pace. However, I was so thirsty the whole time. It’s probably all the brut I’ve drank last night (hey it was New Year’s Eve!).

So no more alcohol from now on, until I’ve run this race. Because this pace of 6:43min/km would make me finish last.

Time: 1hr:1min
Distance: 9.20kms

Day 19 Work
Office day with the kid in tow. I was so hungry the whole day, all I could think of was food. So I had the left over adobo for breakfast and for lunch and pulpo in coconut milk for dinner, all rich, savoury and full of fat.

Day 18 Work+Speed Training
No kid at work today so at the end of the day, before going home, I was able to do a quick training. I did a 8xlight posts (or about 8x175meters), on a 35meter bridge against a 55km/hour wind. That was quite a dead-defying feat, which could mean literally because these sort of speed trainings demand that you use about 80-90% of your heart’s capacity. I think it was the best I could do at the situation at hand, with a maximum pace of 4:33min/km. I’m a bit proud that I could hold that speed for 175 meters at my current condition.

Day 26 Christmas Day
We spent Christmas day with the parents in-law, with the good ‘ol store-bought kerstschotel for dinner. Nothing fancy, no gift-giving, no singing and definitely no Christmas mass (the family is humanist), just a warm family dinner sharing good wine (we had Amarone for tonight), leche flan and more laughter than usual.

Glasses of wine: 2

Day 25 Tempo run
Second Christmas Day in the Netherlands. We weren’t visiting family or friends and I’m not down with flu like last year. As a bonus the sun shines and the sky is blue, perfect for running. So before lunch time we laced up our shoes and went for a 10km, which quickly became 11 kms because the husband miscalculated the route. I had to exert a bit more effort to run faster than last week. The muscles have to get used to the kilometers again.

Running time: 1hr:23
Distance: 11.3 kms
Glasses of wine: 1

Day 24 Work!
We were supposed to be closed for business for a week but stocks must be counted. I was the designated person to do it this year. So from 9am to 6pm, I toiled at work, counted and listed all the products we have, every batch number, every expiry date. My fingers were stiff at the end of the day. Next time, I’d be smart and will bring a laptop. That would make a world of difference.

Glasses of wine: 1

Day 23 Interval
We used to do the interval training in a running track near our former. Now that we’ve moved, we had to be creative with where we train. Fortunately we found this quiet bike lane not so far from our house. Bike lanes are good alternatives to running tracks because of the light posts. We used these light posts to measure the distance. In a normal bike lane, I think the distance between light posts are about 20-25 meters. We did 6×4 light posts or about 6x100meters. Husband’s Garmin registered a 2:39min/km, so mine was probably a minute longer than that.

Running time: 52 minutes
Distance: 7:45 kms
Glasses of wine: 0

Day 29
It’s the Friday before Christmas Monday so I got off work earlier than normal. It’s the husband’s Papa Dag so before I took over the parental and household duties, I went for a run. I thought I’d do a sort of fartlek, sort of interval training. I did about five rounds of 30-40 seconds very fast runs and the rest was a tempo run.

I run for about 43 minutes. How far? I have no idea. I did not turn on my GPS because my battery was running out.

One thing I’m reminded of today is that cobbled-stone streets are bad for your pin heels as well as your knees and shins. It sort of taken away the charm of old cities I used to romanticize when I first came here. I had dreams of living in a city with cobbled-stoned streets. I just didn’t expect to run them.

Time: 43 minutes
Distance?
Glass of wine: 0

Day 28
Today I met up with friends for a brunch at McDonald’s where I had to give away the bacon in my egg muffin sandwich because of #meatlessweekend. We went to Scheveningen beach (one refused but was outnumbered) where we joined hardcore Dutch people for some “uitwaain”, a very Dutch past time that I particularly like to do in Zeeland. It was a windy and grey day, the waves were big, which made for some nice photos with my new Sony camera. After a bit of a walk and a lot of playing around pretending we’re in a photoshoot, we had a lunch of overpriced “kibbeling” (which was cooked more like the English fish in fish and chips ( at the Scheveningen pier. I was surprise that place still exists. Hasn’t it been bankrupt several times already?

But that place was quite special to me. I bungy jump there many moons ago, when I just moved to the Netherlands and was bored to wits. How time flies!
Glasses of wine: 2

Day 27
Fifteen long, slow kilometers today, that’s what’s today training schedule.

I spent the big part of the morning sleeping on the couch, after a huge breakfast of tomato omelette and rice. I felt like I’m coming down with something. I had chills and muscle aches and I was afraid was imminent because my friend from yesterday’s meet-up just had a flu. My stomach was just recovering from whatever bug I caught last week. A 2-hour nap did me good but the start of my run was slow and painful.  And lots of liquid, coffee, home-made ginger tea, and of course water.

It’s very windy again. The kid was wrapped in four layers of clothes this time so she won’t get cold and cry in the middle of the run, like last week. We check on her every now and then because we didn’t want to come home with a frozen baby *kidding. Halfway through the run, the wind was becoming wilder and we were afraid the kid was getting frostbite while sleeping.

We questioned our sensibilities as parents. Is it irresponsible to take your 9-month old to a run of about two hours, in a very cold, winter day?