Back to Training and Blogging
Today, I entered my third day of running again. I managed to cover 8.5 kilometers of running in one hour. That’s ridiculously slow for me, considering that I’ve managed to reach 1 hour and 50 minutes as my faster 21k distance and I have managed a 48 minutes of running a 10k training run. On record, I did a 50 minute 10k run for a race. That was about close to four years ago, when I started to get into the racing scene where I joined almost every race that was out there week after week after week.
Now I’ve wisen up. I don’t join week after week after week. Still, I do have contractual obligations as an ambassador for running under REEBOK. So there’s still two races a month that I can cover. One for the entire team as much as possible while the other run I can do on my own, which is usually an ultramarathon. So far for this year, I realize that February and May are the two months that I won’t have any ultramarathon. I am just recovering from my injury during the Mayon 360. It seems that the injury also made me stop writing blog entries altogether. And sadly, I do not like it either that my blog has started to look like a place of just race announcements.
Still, I would like to say that I overhauled the look on my blog. It’s not completely done but I finally managed to add items to the Menu bar, where now there are drop down selections that would lead you to other links. It’s time that my blog evolve again. It’s time I make it easier to navigate and at the same it, easier for me. Because whether I like it or not, I am no longer writing for myself alone. It matters not if I have thousands of readers or just one reader out there. If I happen to have an interaction with those readers, then that’s all well and good. Alas, things are changing rapidly because of the social network. And frankly, I am quite sure that similar to the Dot Com bubble — there’s definitely going to be a social networking bubble. Just wait for it. It’s bound to happen and at the end of the day, people will wisen up on how they will use social networks.
Lately, while more and more people become active on Facebook, I have slowly veered away from it. I mostly use it to keep in touch with people through its chat messaging feature. Other than that, I really don’t know what else is going on in most people. In fact, I just realize that most of the groups that I belong on Facebook are groups that I was just added into. Thank God there are filters and options. Most of the groups I did not leave, but only I don’t get the notifications straight into my email like it used to. So the question is — will blogging go out of vogue?
I don’t think so. Certainly more and more people are getting into microblogging like Twitter. But the world is far bigger than that, and there are people who still love to read blog posts. There are people who still long for intelligently written articles. In fact, most corporations out there still hold up to an ideal in terms of writing — the style of how an article is written and even the look and feel of a website affects the very texture and overall emotion of what is actually written. And like any form of writing, it also requires training. I feel rusty right now, writing this blog entry at a coffee shop just before I go home because when I get home, I realize that I just want to sleep. Coffee shops are an effective place to write. I have started to realize that I can start drowning out the noise and clutter. Still, there are days when it is so much fun to just listen to all the stories all around me. For fiction writers, real life dialogue comes from such as these little things.
I feel tired. I feel physically exhausted from covering 8.5 kilometers of running. How tired was I? Well, right after taking a bath it was pure instinct that I just went to the nearest place to eat and grabbed a sandwich. I did not want to gorge down on food. I even avoided juices because I sincerely wanted to take my training regimen seriously. It’s no joke that I am now at 153 pounds. This is my heaviest weight to date in over a decade! And I am not happy with it because the heavier I am, the slower I am with my runs. And that is why I know that this excess weight is what causes part of the pain in my knees. Alas, I cannot deny that in spite of the limited options of things to eat — being a pesco vegan and all — I still LOVE to eat. And because of the stress at work, eating has become a form or relaxation and managing the stress.
Still, it feels good to be back into training and back into writing. I double checked my outlines, I have close to about 25 articles that I should have, ought to have and could have posted for the last seven weeks. Alas, timidity got the best of me. Sometimes I ask myself — does it even really matter what I write about? Then when I try to answer that question, I realize that the answer is YES. Because when I document aspects of my life, it gives me a chance to go back to the past. It reminds me of what I need to work on, what I’ve accomplished so far and how the journey has been. And sadly, I can say that the journey of life has taken an interesting twist as I am facing another crisis in my life. And yet, there are things that I just can’t publish online either. To share aspects of my life is one thing. To share ALL of me, well, that’s something reserved to my family and friends. People who really matter to me. People who are willing to sit down with me for a cup of coffee, laugh with me during dinners and cry along and pray with me and for me during the wee hours of the morning or over coffee and breakfast meetings. And right now, I just want to thank my family for just being supportive to me, praying for me and just being there to listen. I also like to thank my extended family TEAM REEBOK RUNNING and TEAM REEBOK TRI for also just cheering me up right now.
God, to take this next step and journey of faith isn’t easy. Yet I believe with all of my heart, the cliche statement that even the longest night offers reprieve to a dawning new day. And in the morning, I pray that it will …. LET MY RUNNING PROVE THE SUNSHINE.
