How did I got into running?

This is my first post to this blog. I had a little bit of thinking a while ago why did I put up this blog. I thought this would be a good venue for me to keep track of my running experience and to share to others as well. To inspire maybe or just to let others know of the fun and excitement I feel and they would feel when they got into the sport (or hobby, or whatever people want to call it).

"How did I got into running?" sounds like a fitting  topic to start up this blog. Well, the first time I ran was summer of 2009, I was with the brothers of the Servants of the Word, a missionary brotherhood, having a retreat in Tagaytay. One night, some brothers just decided to have a run the following morning. During the time, I don't know what is the distance of the route that we were talking about and certainly I don't know anything about my limitation.  We ended up running around 9 kilometers. Yes, good job for a first time run. Well I walked a great part of it. But still hitting the road for around 1.5 hours was no joke.  Part of what kept me going was the company. And of course not wanting to be left in some area I was not familiar with. I was with brother Marlon who was in the lead and Arick, a fellow newbie. This first run taught me that I can actually run long distances. I actually enjoyed the muscle pain that came with the fulfillment of finishing that run with my friends.

I started running more regularly around June or July of last year (2010). My usual run is around 5k in Scout Area, Quezon City. By this time, I already have a desire to run a marathon. A lot of it came from my friends who just recently went for a marathon and enjoyed it. My friend Vincent went for the Milo marathon and came out of it alive. But then he was training for it all that summer and being faithful to it. He shared that he was waking up early in the morning to run four times a week with varying distance, gaining more mileage per week. Now why would people spend so much time training for a marathon? Isn't it hard? Even painful?  Whenever I thought about it at the time, the more I ask myself "Can I do it? 42k?". I knew it would be hard and close to impossible, but it just made me more excited to conquer it(bring it on!). I just have to try and see for myself. And so my training begun. I had my own training plan thanks for brother Jops(coach).

And that's it! I became more enthusiastic to run just after writing this. :)