Doing sports is one of my favorite pastimes, particularly team sports such as volleyball, but in the previous year I discovered a new sport that I got very passionate about: running. Previously, I only ran 5km once a year in my previous school’s “Fun Run”, but never really appreciated it a lot as it was a graded task, and as I am sure many people know that if something is graded, it can take the fun out of the activity, such as reading a book. However, about a year ago I participated in a fun 10km run and finished it in just under 1 hour, the endorphins keeping me from stopping in the last several kilometers. This was a very mesmerizing experience, and I became aware that I could do something that I had never thought about before – in a sense, I gained self-confidence.
From this point onward I started running training. Not for time, but for distance. I used to come to school early twice a week to run 10km. I realized that apart from being fun, running actually helped me being more concentrated in class, despite having to wake up an hour earlier. During the summer break, I set up a training schedule, which I followed closely. This resulted in me reaching 16km by the end of the summer. I realized that with more training I could take part in a half-marathon – a 21km run – although I knew this would require a lot of effort.
Push-ups. I changed the placement of my hands for every set to use different muscles each time for a more balanced workout. Photo credits: Savindi Jayasuria.
As I was doing volleyball three times a week, I have little energy for other sports, but I am eager to continue running, as I improved so much during the summer and it would be a shame to stop training. We had our SAISA boys volleyball tournament in October, after which work was piling up even more than ever in my school time. However, this was my chance to take up running more seriously again. I tried to balance running with working out as I did the previous year, as I thought that was a nice balance to keep sports fun and relaxing for me. After the tournament I ran about once a week and worked out once or twice, depending on whether I had major assignments coming up the following day.
After the volleyball season I started working out more frequently, but now the musical band took up much of my time so again I did not do as much sport as I would have liked. Nonetheless, I went to the gym regularly and went on a run in the evenings from time to time.
Doing dips. I used a theraband for dips for 2 out of 3 sets of 10. Photo credits: Savindi Jayasuria
I could train much less than I had intended, which in a way was disappointing but I was aware that I wanted to focus more on academics this year so I accepted that. Even so, I managed to train regularly after the volleyball tournament, which was the main way for me to continue being active and kept me balanced in a time when there was a lot of work.