In April this year I wrote about my experience of running the 3 Miles at the Enschede marathon event. At that time I was already very proud of myself and tried to motivate myself by writing the following final sentence:
“Maybe next year I dare to push myself even more and sign up for the 5 Miles…”
Not knowing that within a couple of weeks my mail-box got filled with e-mails about the “vrouwenloop”. A running event for women by women. A big part of the collected money will be donated to PinkRibbon.
With two aunties, the mum of one of my female friends and thousands of other women that fight breast cancer I hardly needed to motivate or push myself and signed up.
So instead of pushing myself to run the 5 miles next year, I push myself to run 10Km at the “vrouwenloop” on the 25th of September at the University of Twente.
Just after signing up for the “vrouwenloop”, I also received e-mails for the “singelloop”. A running event in Enschede where you can run a distance of…….guess……….. 5 Miles(8km)!! around the center of Enschede. This event will take place on the 11th of September. I thought this would be a nice training distance for my 10km, therefore I signed up. So in short, I will be running twice in a period of 2 weeks!!!
I am very much aware of the fact that thousands of people are runners, some are amateurs, some are pro’s. I am aware of the fact that most of them (probably all of them) will set a better time than me. However I am so proud of myself, I could have not imagined this a couple of years ago. I really started enjoying it.
It is so incredible, that I am now able to run for 1 hour and almost 15 minutes, with an average speed of 9.5km/h. Hard to imagine that only a decade ago I could not even climb up the stairs without breathing problems, that I could hardly bike to school, and could not do any sports. It shows, that health condition can change when you know how to take care of it.
People say that life is going down after 30, but for me it seems to be the opposite…
I will give my best on the 11th of September and my very best on the 25th of September… I will run, I will finish, I will be able to do it. It is the least I can do for all those strong women out there, fighting breast cancer.
