All tagged SportTracks 3.0
While I enjoy running in general, it constantly and painfully reminds me of my physical limits. Despite my almost life-long relationship with running, I am embarrassingly slow and technically bad.
As the stubborn and competitive person that I am, being slow and bad at running does not stop me from occasionally reaching for the sky. My recent participation in the Green Power Hike, a 50km trail running race over the full length of the Hong Kong trail, across the rocky backbone of the island was an example for me testing my limits. The 24th edition of the iconic trail running event was my fourth participation. How would my lack of training, five years of age, and five kilogram body weight since my personal best in 2012 affect my performance?
In part one of my "Ode to Active Holidays" I explained why I return more mentally refreshed from holidays in which I stayed physically active and challenged myself than from lazy beach holidays. In part two we pick up where part 1 left, one day two of my recent adventure trip to the Japanese Alps. Come with me to Azumino and climb Mt. Tsubakurodake.
I love running for the almost meditative effects that it has on me. At the same time, I hate that I run so depressingly slow.
In my twenties my times were actually not too bad. Not enough for competitive ambitions but not too shabby either. A mere decade later my running times have deteriorated massively, and just getting below the 1h for 10km again was a massive battle. In past years I often wondered what exactly caused the breakdown of my running abilities. So let's take a look.
I am somewhat of a quantified self (QS) nut. For many years I have taken my body weight and other measures almost every morning. Like most people who track body data with Fitbits, smart scales or other means, I accumulated a lot of measurements over time, but did almost nothing with the data collected. As I’ve mentioned in several of my articles, a huge part of the motivation to start Life-Sparring was to push myself harder on my quest to improve myself, and along the journey, provide some value to those who read my ramblings. That’s motivation enough to dig into the data and take a closer look at some of it.
