Highlights of 6/45-day Half-Marathon Challenge

Adnan Sabanovic
4 min readJun 11, 2019

First day after my one-day break and I decided to take it 1km outside of my comfort zone. Here is how it went …

Before we continue with the article, let me take you to the master post in case you are landing from somewhere else.

This is my 4th workout and my body is definitely starting to adapt to a new activity. Since my bones can take a while, this was surprisingly fast adaptation. I guess muscles and bones do remember stuff.

I am about to check out my running chart and when it comes to pacing, I am expecting a fairly flat line across the chart with spikes when making U-turns.

Day 6/45

Food

Again, vegetables (green, red, yellow) mixed with chicken breasts (my fav) with a good old “cooked paprika” (google it).

Hydration

I am not the best at this so I mix. I kind of have a saying that any liquid is liquid, so you can expect water, soda drinks (not a lot, just a glass or two after a bigger meal), tea and instant coffee (the ones from the small bag — 3 in 1). Topped up with a watermelon.

Challenge

  • I got caught up with some challenges at work and I am type of person that I wouldn’t eat when I am in the middle of something until I get close to solving the issue. This was research wise so it wasn’t urgent, but still what tipped me over was the accountability I put out there. It kept ringing in my head that I need to write this article and for God’s sake, start finishing things on my agenda. I have many small projects that I have started that are still waiting to be done. The most disturbing thing is that some of those are about 90% done.
  • Headache — I was trying to use the one thing that is supposed to be the cure for it, as an excuse to not go running.

Joy

  • As always, it definitely feels great accomplishing something, regardless of how small it was. To put it even better, it feels great reaching your goals and as Helen Cassidy Page said, not giving up.
  • Headache is definitely not as bad as it was before. Still not completely over

Comfort Zone

One of the basic principles of Personal Growth/Development, call it whatever you want, is that you will need to change something in your life because the current setup is obviously not working for you. That means doing something different that is not part of your daily comfort, something your brain isn’t accustom to think about or your body to experience.

This one extra kilometer didn’t come across being something that actually put me out of my comfort zone (regardless of what I said in the beginning). The real comfort zone getaway will be persisting into completing this final run. Of course, this is on a larger scale. All these principles can apply on a lower level or a lower timeframe as well. I don’t want to discourage you.

I am a big believer in small wins throughout the day.

You were able to make your bed in the morning after years of doing the opposite. Good, you just won!

You were able to go to bed on time and wake up at 4:30AM to have your 2 hours of YOU time. Good, you just won!

You were able to say no to a cookie and go after a glass of water (it is known that if you fill your stomach with water, you will eat less or lose the hunger/food craving). Good, you just won BIG!

Let’s look at the chart:

Day 5/45

Wow, not that that bad and it was pretty close to what I expected. Average is around 5:55. I plan to get that lower for the final race in order to run the entire race in 1h 45min.

TIP OF THE DAY

Make sure to listen to your body in the beginning and don’t push too hard. Once you have gone through few runs your body will be more resistant to changes inside and will naturally normalize the efforts so your whole run will start to look like one big flat line. However, don’t become comfortable. The first run you experience that try to add a bit more the next time so we keep pushing the limits.

Thank you for all the support that I am receiving. This goes for all of those fighting depression and anxiety but also laziness. Together we can do more.

If you haven’t,

Follow me on Twitter
Add me on LinkedIn

--

--

Adnan Sabanovic

Just a tech guy involved in mastering life using mental and physical discipline. Journaling about productivity, personal development and overall growth. #Life