# A total of 9 months into training…

- Date: 2025-01-08
- Category: everything-else
- URL: https://kushtaneja.com/a-total-of-9-months-into
- Original: https://x.com/kushxtaneja/status/1877018447722270811
- Song: Mehnat Chaddni Nai — Satinder Sartaaj

A total of 9 months into training and I did my first 10k and I also did 5k under 25 mins. Yayyyy

My schedule was like this:
Sunday: Long runs
Tuesday: Tempo runs
Thursday: Easy runs
Saturday: 400m Sprints

Since along with running my body I also had to run a company 🥲
I figured I can manage to take out 1 hour every day in the early morning like 7am ish. the excitement to wake up early for run also fixed my sleep

The only aim from this point of time was to always do better than the last run. Sometimes distance or sometimes pace

Sometimes if I wasn’t able to wake up early and had to do in the evening, it didn’t work well for me. I terribly failed in doing better than the last run. I think empty stomach runs are the best for me and since then I always preferred mornings even more

I started signing up for 5k, 10k marathons and they were extremely fun

Music helped in the early days but then the beat frequency started to affect my pace and efficiency. I got easily tiered after many fluctuations in the pace, that’s when I shifted to @EndelSound

Runs with @EndelSound are too good. The constant sync between the freshly baked music and my heartbeat made sure I am running at consistent pace. This was a major stepping stone to do longer runs like 21k

For consistent pace, I also used another hack: sometimes while doing strength training, I’d do a 20 min treadmill run on only one pace (a faster one)

I also noticed a weird pattern, the days I was not aiming for a personal best were the days I did achieve them 😅
Here are my PBs for 5k, 10k and 21k

Also, I wanted to mention that there were many days I didn’t feel like going for a run. Whenever there were enough challenges already on my plate from work/ personal, I couldn’t find the energy to go for a run. Earlier, I used to be disappointed, but later I made peace with it.

I was able to make peace because I understand the concept of stress+rest = growth or the balance of pain and pleasure. @WHOOP also helped measure it daily. I also made sure once I had enough rest, I went back and worked harder for my runs.

I ran/walked 362/730 days, which is not ideal but good enough. There were weeks I simply couldn’t go for a single run, and the longest gap between two runs was 14 days. What I learnt the most is that it’s not important to run every day but to run when you can

Also, the photo I posted is from my first 5k under 21 mins. I am also wearing headphones, which were helpful then, but now I enjoy runs without them. It was just the best running picture I had 😅

Hope this is helpful in your running journey ✌️

One more learning I just remembered: Breathing through nose was what everyone recommended but it was very difficult. In the beginning I stopped caring about it and only focused on doing distance but gradually I improved upon by breathing. Now I think I do 60% nose and 40% mouth

also I quickly moved from cemented roads to muddy tracks because my knee used to hurt, only later after it was used to with running longer distances on soft tracks I could go for longer road runs

without good sleep/ 70+ recovery, the runs weren't that good