Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Running Blog: Week 1


For those of you who don’t know, I am training for the Victoria Falls Half-Marathon. About half of the Bots ‘14 group (my intake group) is going, and it is going to be ridiculously fun. The run in on the Zimbabwe side of the falls, and the race route follows the edge of the falls. Therefore, I am not really sure how much running I will be doing, as I anticipate I will be taking photos every few feet. It might hinder my race time.
Training in my village presents two main problems. First, the sand. There is one paved road in my village. It runs from one side to the other, and splits Sefhare down the middle. To get to the main road takes about 10 minutes of running in sand. Running in sand is difficult, and you have to train carefully to be able to run in sand well. Therefore, I make sure that I really stretch my ankles before running, as I don’t want to twist an ankle while running in the sand.
The second problem about running in my village is the distance. I don’t have a clear measurement of how far I am running. According to the combi driver at the Red Cross, from the Hospital to the Immigration Office in my town (from one side to the other, following the paved road), it is about 2.5k. Which means, there isn’t really anywhere to run except from one side of my village to the other. It is very boring.
Today I did my first 5k training run. It took me 1 hour, based on what I was told on distances. I usually can do a 5k in about 30 minutes, and even if I was walking, I don’t think it would take me that long. And I am not that out of shape. I swear.
Therefore, problem number two: I don’t know how far these distances are! The race is at the end of June, so I have a lot of time to train. So, fingers crossed it goes well! 

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