Lessons from the road

For the first time in my life on Wednesday last week, I ran 10 Kilometers at one go.

It was a huge achievement since three months ago, I could not run 100 meters without feeling I was going to have a heart attack. Now, I am running 20 kilometers a day, divided into two sessions in the morning and evening.

Of course I am bragging, since I have also lost 20 Kgs along with this running achievement, but I have come up with some startling yet simple insights during the exhilarating moments of freedom I experience while running. They are connected closely to Design Thinking and Innovation, since I plan my writing and work while I am running, so here goes.
I am not going to make clear correlations, but will leave it to every person who reads this piece to come up their own connections and insights. I will be quite happy if even just one person does that.

My experiences with my kids gave me determination.

The reason I started my whole affair with exercise was based on losing weight as the prime motivator. I needed to and wanted to lose weight because I wanted to snatch back my crown as the reigning family squash champion – a difficult task seeing as to how my children are all Malaysian squash players. Their training started with me at around eight years of age, and those were the glory days for me. I could not regain the crown without first disposing of the 30Kgs or so of fat I was lugging around with me, and so…running. Now the kids have to actually play their top game to win every point, and I am still midway through my journey.

There is no way I could have sustained my efforts thus far, without experiencing the human impact of the problem. I have experienced the laziness, the weakness, the huffing and panting on court, and the bored and disappointed looks form my children, and that gives me determination to become the adored king again.

My determination drives my will power.

The first two months were full of blisters, knife-stabbing painful heels, friction burn on the armpits and thighs, aching back and knees – it was a nightmare. I cannot believe that I of all people, actually put up with the pain (still!) and went past it. I who hate pain especially when I have a choice. Spending those hours driving through the tens of thousands of painful steps – and every step hurt – gave me new insights about what it must take to achieve successes. It is not about physical achievements, but the mental satisfaction that comes from knowing that I had the will to endure and to get past just enduring, and to gain freedom and inspiration that solely came for my own intrinsic motivations. To deal with that level of commitment, consistency and chaos; it takes nothing less.

My will power drove me to levels where I went past suffering thresholds, and saw results that made me believe.

At first, it was a purely solo effort that saw me running 22 laps around my apartment complex, each of which is 460 meters. The people living here must have thought they were crazy. Here is this guy running as they are leaving for work in the morning, and here is the same guy running in the same clothes (I believe in identical sets of clothes) in the evening as they come home. Some even asked me if I had been running the whole day. Strangers, who are now friends, stop me and tell me how “slim” I have become, and some tell me I have inspired them to become regular exercisers too.  Even now I laugh to myself to think that I have inspired people to exercise! I realise that when you reach extraordinary levels of achievements even in simple everyday trivial matters, such as losing weight and showing people how passionate you are about what you believe in, then you can become an unlikely source of inspiration. The ripples of the simplest actions will echo for a long time, and you will never have any knowledge of how you touch peoples’ lives, and touch them you will. A seemingly simple running activity bonds other people’s families as they start exercising with their children, and a whole community of people suddenly become friends because everyone is moving on common apartment grounds and talking to each other.

Things that appeared hard and serious become trivial and easy, as life becomes joyous and I sweat only during the run, and never because of passing hardships.

When I first started, a 100 meter run would see me gasping for air, and my lungs and throat would be burning, and I could not carry out a conversation. Now, I find my pulse rate way too low, almost at 8o, even when I am at the 5Km mark, and I have to speed up so my pulse rate goes up. I carry on long conversations if I have someone running with me, and am not even conscious of breathing. I hardly sweat during the run, and when previously a 2 Km walk would leave my clothes dripping, now the 10 Km run leaves my clothes damp with sweat. Problems and hardships become easier when dealt with in a systematic way and approached with a view that it will eventually get solved. It might be difficult, it might be painful, but hey, that’s what makes life interesting and builds personality…and leg muscles!

It is easy for even the hardest things to become part of your comfort zone, and you have to shift perspectives and targets to keep getting better.

Three days ago, I followed my children to their weekend run at the park as part of their team training program. I thought I would show all these young punks what I could do. They were only running 7 Km compared to my 10. When I saw the hill they ran every lap, I felt a twinge of anxiety. That twinge of anxiety quickly became shards of pain and back to gasping breaths, when I realised that I had had no training to incorporate 40 degree, long slopes into my workout. New decision. I would now include a run up the staircase to the 11^th floor, as part of my running regiment. My body is fit for flat running surfaces, but throw some new elements into it, and my fitness crumbles. There is no such thing as getting there and achieving it all. The definition of “it all” always changes, and you have to keep on changing up your own routines and talents, so you can be ready for anything. The moment you become acclimatised and complacent, you become stuck in a rut. If that works for you, fine. If you are the sort who wants to stay at the top of your game, keep throwing a spanner into the works.

Every morning when I wake up, I still cannot believe that I am looking forward to another 20Km day, and enjoying every minute of it too. People I have not met for a long time are shocked when they see me, and it is fun to have so any good friends and acquaintances walking around my apartment grounds and maybe even thinking to themselves, “That guy changed my life.”

And all because an old, overweight fart wanted to lose weight to again beat his kids at squash.