Are We There Yet?

I have a decent physical endurance, or at least that was I thought. When my wife and I were looking for organised runs to sign up for I was quick to dismiss the 5k run. I was thinking maybe that would be too easy for me. I (used to) play basketball and I can finish a whole game without much trouble. How bad could a 5k run be?

In the end we signed for the 5k distance run but with some caveat, it is a 5k trail run. I didn't thought much about it at first. I know it would be different from the regular runs in that it would be on dirt and there would be inclines and declines along the way. I guess that is our way of making our first organised run a little bit more challenging – and it did.

It was a beautiful and sunny Saturday morning. We have done our stretches and we are ready to go. We don't have any grandiose goal to speed through the course, we just want to finish the whole thing.

I quickly realised what we got ourselves into. The trail didn't even let us ease into it. As we are just getting started there was already a very steep incline on our way. And when we reached Hammarbytoppen I took a good look of the beautiful view below and recognised that it will be a long and interesting morning. I was still trying to conversate with Tricia during the first one and a half kilometre but she's not having any of it. This is serious now. I had to stop talking.

People were running past us left and right and we are trying our best not to impede their path. It was really amazing seeing how the Swedes were able to run and navigate their way through overgrowth, wet dirt, and tree branches. While we were struggling to get a proper pace with all the constant inclines and declines they all seem to be just zooming past all of these things. As they say, there are levels to it.

In the end, I'm just glad that we were able to (barely) finish it without needing any special medical attention. We are still having discussions whether we would do something like that again.