Starting out again

Kene Adibe
Nov 1 · 2 min read
Photo by Angelina Litvin on Unsplash

Venturing into something new can be exciting, emotional and adventurous.

It gets scary too and intimidating at times especially when it involves a life-changing decision like moving to a new city, getting married or starting a new business.

Mark Zuckerberg got me running his 365 miles Year of Running in 2016; I didn’t quite hit the goal, and no, it wasn’t scary, it was exciting — I had nothing to lose. In fact, I relished every experience from going to the mall to shop for running gear to taking cool post run pictures for social media. It was all fun. By 2017 I had taken running seriously (and no, I’m no pro athlete). I have since raced a marathon, several halves, and have run at least 1000 kilometres every year since then.

A few weeks before my only marathon, I injured my shin during training. I had overdone it during the interval sessions. It was time to take a break: rest my legs, heal, recover and then start running all over again. But that meant missing the marathon. No way! I had trained long months for this race, I was having none of that. And even when I thought it stupid to go ahead with the race, my friend guilt-tripped me about our initial plan to race together. I bulged. I raced with a heavily strapped leg, endured excruciating pain while finishing in over four hours. My legs were gone, I could barely walk.

I was out for about three months. As much as I missed running, getting started again was daunting. It felt like being a newbie: building endurance, watching my pace, working out a training plan and taking care of my legs. I was relearning the whole damn thing.

It’s been over a year now and I am a better runner: no injuries since then and my pace has improved too.

Like running, I am learning to write again. I left writing to chase the moola years ago with limited success if I must say, and I am still chasing. Thankfully, my love for expressing my thoughts, ideas and experiences through words has remained intact. I am raring to go again, structuring my schedule with writing in mind, putting pen to paper, typing away on the keypad and just basically starting again. Scary stuff!

    Kene Adibe
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