Hello! It’s my birthday! Woohoo!
Today, I’m turning 35 years old and, a few hours ago, I just came back home after running 21 kilometers and with a new lesson learned. I did that in 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Initially, I wanted to run 35 kilometers but… it all started 2 months ago as an idea that I later turned into a goal.
It should have been my first time doing this (matching my age with the distance) and I was excited about it because I’ve known about this tradition for a while. Most runners, in the runners’ community, like to celebrate their birthday by running the distance that matches their age. Obviously, the older you get, the more challenging this becomes.
Nonetheless, I’m happy with my achievement and very proud of myself.
One thing I learned is some sort of paradox.
On one hand, if you cannot do it in your mind, your body won’t.
But on the other hand, if your body is not prepared, it won’t follow your mind’s plan.
In my case, I was mentally prepared to run that distance. But my body wasn’t. At kilometer 14, I started feeling some knee pain – it was like both my knees felt stuck.
“It’s just another pain, it will go away.”
Usually, during a run, whatever pain you experience, it goes away from that specific part of your body and you start feeling it somewhere else.
This time, it didn’t. I was at kilometer 20 and the pain was still there. That’s why I stopped.
The last time I ran a distance longer than 25 kilometers, it was back in 2014, at a 64-kilometer ultramarathon. It’s been 12 years since then.
My longest recent run? In 2024, I ran a mountain half-marathon (22 kilometers). And since then, I have had a few runs of 10 kilometers and many runs of 5 kilometers.
This year, before today’s run, I had run:
- 41 x 5 km
- 3x 7.5 km (one week at the end of April)
- 1x 10 km (sometime in April)
When you look at it from this point of view, you can say that my body wasn’t prepared. And it wasn’t. But I wanted to try anyway – my optimism didn’t simply let me say to myself that I can’t do it.
And now, while I didn’t achieve the initial goal, I got myself a smaller goal and a lesson. Next year, if I set myself to run 36 kilometers on my birthday, I’ll train properly.
With love and optimism,
David