Missing games

May 14, 2014
2 min read

I love doing “30 days” challenges. So far I’ve done 30 days without coffee, after which I don’t drink coffee in the morning. 30 days without bread, which helped me stick to the diet and lose weight, the other one I’ve done was writing something for 30 days, that was in the middle of 2012 and still I write something every single day, it could be blog post, but it also can be some note in OneNote, doesn’t matter, the point is to write. 

Since Monday, May 12, I’ve decided to do one more 30 days challenge, this time it’s “30 days without games”. Sunday before that I’ve removed all the games from my phone, tablet and PC. I mostly play casual games on my iPad (lately 2048 and Trial Frontiers) and couple of games on PC (the one I’ve played for about 11 years is PES – FIFA in the begging, but hen I’ve changed the camp – and couple of others, that change very often). 

Before this week, I didn’t even realize how much time is consumed by playing games. While I’m at home, about once an hour I think about playing couple of matches in PES, watching TV Show? It’s time to fire up some iPad game. I’ve actually started to pay more attention to TV shows and I’m getting more enjoyment out of it. 

It’s not even a week and I already see changes, I’m afraid to think how I’ll feel in a month. 

How I went from hating running to my first 10k

May 5, 2014
3 min read

I’ve been putting off writing this post for a week now, finally got to it!

For almost all of my life I was overweight and running was hard for me. I didn’t like doing things for the sake of it, like running, jumping etc., but I loved playing football, volley and other sports. At school we had to run some short distances every year, I had no problem doing that, but then there was 3600m. I couldn’t do it. Later, about 3 years ago, my weight peaked at 120kg, it was hard even thinking about running, I’ve tried once, ran about 500m and walked back home, I’ve bought a treadmill and was walking/running at home for 30 minutes couple times a week at best. Then I lost about 20kg and for 2-3 years my weight was at about 95 kilo mark. I tried running couple of times and could do 1-1.5k, but never loved doing it and there was no progress.

In the end of last year I started to gain weight, on 08.01.2014 it got to 103 kilos and so I’ve decided to lose some of it, in about a month I’ve lost 10 kilos and decided to start running. I’ve got Fitbit, Runkeeper, really nice Nike Pegasus running shoes and was ready to go! My first run was 2.28km with average pace of 7:02, it felt great and I could see, just by losing weight I could run more. This time I was motivated to run and, most importantly, I’ve enjoyed it. 

In another month I’ve lost additional 8 kilos and so my weight got to 85-86, progress with running was not big, but I could definitely see it and feel it. In exactly a month from my first run I’ve run 5.1km with an average pace of 6:21. It was the longest run in my whole life, the feeling was great!

Then I’ve got couple of colds, so I couldn’t run, but when I did, I’ve got the distance of about 6-7km. The week before my record I barely managed 6km and whole week didn’t have any physical activity.

When I started this particular run, I wished I could do 6km again and after about 3km I was pretty sure that was my limit for the day. After next 2km I was almost dying, but decided to try to beat my own record of 7km and so I continued to run and this “almost dying” feeling was there until 10km, it didn’t get any worse, it just was the same feeling. When I saw 10km on the screen I’ve jumped, I was very happy! It was unbelievable.

Was thinking how to end this story and the only thing I can say, is some cheesy thing, like “you are capable of anything, just go and try!”. But it really is true, you just have to believe you can do it.