How it all started

I didn't always love running, in fact when I was younger I thought it was really boring to just run by myself.  .  I had always preferred team sports, and I really loved playing soccer.  This was before the days of little mp3 players, so there was no way to listen to music.  Also there was internet with slick websites that could track my runs.  And if I wanted to figure out the distance of a run I would have had to use a paper map or drive the route in a car using the odometer to measure it (even that wasn't digital!).

So as part of trying to stay fit, once in a while I would try to go out for a run, but I never really stuck with it.  In the fall of 2011 I decided that when I did go run I wanted to try keeping some kind of track of my runs.  I think I tried a few sites, with www.walkjogrun.net being the one I found the easiest to use.  I would use my iPod nano to time the run and I would manually plot run route on the site to get the distance.

2011


Although I wasn't running too much, I managed to get a few runs every month from October 2011 until April 2012.  But then my running dropped off again as I was once again playing more soccer.  There was only one run (Sep 2012) until March 2013.

2012


Two things happened around the same time.  My wife happened to borrow the book, Eat and Run by ultra-marathoner Scott Jurek, from the library and a friend told me about www.smashrun.com.  I really enjoyed reading about Jurek's love for running and found it quite inspirational.  But I think the SmashRun site is what really finally got me to stick with running.  The sheer amount of stats combined with the very slick presentation really had me hooked.  The site also shows you how you ranks compared to others based on distance, devotion, and speed.  As if that wasn't enough there are also badges.  I don't know what it is about the badges, but I love earning them.

The first 5 days I was on the site I ran each day just to earn the 5 for 5 badge.  That month I also got the 10 and 20 under your belt, One Mile, 5ker, Solid Week, Solid Month, Chariots of Fire, Roadrunner, and In it for March.  I ran 61km that month, the most I had ever done before that was 22km.

I certainly improved my fitness which I noticed when playing soccer.  However I also put a lot of new stress on my body, which I feel contributed to some injuries.  I had some trouble with my ankles, including spraining my right ankle while playing soccer in April.  Once I recovered from that I had a pretty good running summer.  But at the end of August I sprained my left ankle quite badly, once again playing soccer.  Once I recovered from that September and October were quite good.  But in November I developed what seemed like a case of plantar fasciitis in my right foot.  The birth of our 3rd child in December meant that running was on hold for a bit anyway.

2013


Still managed 462km in 2013.  Considering I started in March and had some injuries, and tried to fit running in with soccer seemed pretty good to me.

2014 started out ok considering the new baby and crappy winter weather.  I was only playing soccer part-time at that point, but that did mean that after running earlier in the day I might get a message asking me to play in the evening.  That might have been ok when I was younger, or if I had been in better overall physical condition.  On March 25th before lunch I went for an almost 7km run.  I played soccer that evening and towards the end of the game twisted my knee and felt some pain in it that did not go away.  Over the next few months I managed to re-injure it several times.  It has been a rather frustrating road back to running fitness.