In the words of Ice Cube, I gotta say it was a good day. I hit the ground running (ha!), felt the TINIEST twinge in my troublesome shin and slowwwwwwed down. Worth it, because it was the longest I’ve been able to run! I made it through Dos and loved everything until I got to Nightlife and cringed a little, but Amy was a great track to end with. I had zero pain in my shin (slow running!!) so I kept going and popped Tre on and took the longer way home.
My favourite song on Dos is Wild One – it’s a little Weezer-esque to me, and I love that. I also loved Amy. Convince me that this is not an early-Beatles track?! I swear that Bille Joe is channeling John Lennon and I am absolutely here for it. I’ve always known that The Beatles were a big inspiration for Green Day, but I’m certainly developing a new understanding and appreciation for just how much!
My favourite song on Tre (and love that the album art is Tre), is 8th Avenue Serenade. I love a good little false start intro, and it felt oddly nostalgic like I’d heard it before. A special mention goes to Drama Queen – an interesting track, thematically, and it had a bit of an Oasis vibe to it. Oasis is a great example of a band that I could do for this project – listened to two albums (the first two), a few tracks had a heavy rotation on my highschool iPod playlist, but then at some point in my 20s it became very uncool to acknowledge this. They made a huge cultural impact too – bigger than the Beatles according to Noel (haha) – I mean, I know everyone cringes at Wonderwall, but should it matter if people care that you like that song? It doesn’t help that Noel is famous for being a jerk as well as a musician. I watched an episode of This is Pop on Netflix recently all about the Britpop phenomenon in the 90s, and the huge feud between Oasis and Blur. Actually a really great series, I do recommend (my favourite episodes are the first 3: Boyz II Men; T-Pain (<3); and the one about how Swedish producers have absolutely dominated pop music for a very long time). Wow, I digress, and I will park Oasis and Blur as project potentials. Actually, I will start compiling a list of some of the artists I intend to – tell me what you think, and suggest some too! At this rate, I can listen to 2 albums a week, so I can knock over a short discography in a couple of weeks. I only have 3 Green Day albums left – that went quick! I’m especially looking forward to listening to their latest album, Saviours, but I’ll wait until I get to it.
I made my first little run reel on Instagram which was fun. I can make more of them, but please be forgiving! Here are some more thoughts about my run today. It felt great until I was a few songs into Tre and for the first time on a recent run I felt like I needed an energy boost. I attribute this to sleeping in, starting my run later, and it was definitely breakfast time while I was halfway through my run. I run before I eat usually, but I’m going to have to get up a bit earlier for my long runs if I want to start building on the time.
Oh, and I registered for my first EVER Half Marathon!! So exciting and a bit scary! I will be able to do it, but it does feel like a big mental block that I need to overcome. I need to be able to think about it in terms of TIME and not DISTANCE, and here is my current thought process around it. When I did my first 10km runs, I ran them in 55 mins. My brain then thought that 10km would (or should) ALWAYS EQUAL 55 mins, and any run that was slower than that was a failure. I don’t believe in failed runs anymore. Runs may not look or feel or play out the way I intend, but THERE IS NO FAILURE when I am DOING IT REGARDLESS. When I first started, that meant a little run, then a little walk, then a little run etc. I was so frustrated with myself that I could barely go a few hundred meters without having to stop. GOOD. That’s absolutely fine and normal. I want to illustrate this:
Here is some basic running data from my Garmin (raise your hand and permission to sob quietly if “data” is something that seems to rule both your personal and professional lives).
I started running/walking in August 2023. I RAMPED IT UP so so SO quickly and unsustainably in September because my ego dictated that was where I was meant to be. But the reality was, I hadn’t moved my body like that in 4 YEARS. It was ridiculous of me to expect instant progress, and it still is. I’ve found it HARD and DIFFICULT to cultivate my willingness to comitting to a routine. There are some great short term wins like the endorphins that are released in the moment, but the longer-term stuff is exactly that – long term! I was expecting to glide through 5kms five times a week and look cool doing it, but I got shin splints (potentially a stress fracture?!) instead. They were truly brutal and I still complain about the ghosts they’ve left behind. Look at that data – I didn’t run or walk (long ones) for 2 whole months. When I started again, I started slow, and as consistently as my body would allow.
When I was bouncing back from the ABSOLUTE WORST bout of shin splints, the physio literally told me to set a timer for JUST ONE MINUTE, do a little “shuffle” (let’s not kid ourselves, it was more like that) for that time, and then WALK for 5-10 minutes and REPEAT. “Walking” while “running” is not a sign of failure. I didn’t start this blog to persuade people to run, just to jot down my own musings on it, but if you have a hankering for a run, you can do it however it feels right for you, or however you manage to get there. If you go for a run, you’re a runner. This is why I steer clear of Strava. Keeping tabs on others was giving me huge anxiety about where I should be in terms of my own progress and training, and it wasn’t healthy for me to keep making those comparisons. I ended up injuring myself because of them. No Strava, just straight bangers.
Wow, this one is a doozy! Thanks for coming along for the trot.
Oh, a P.S. – All of the images in my blog are quick snaps that I take on my runs, usually during the km that I walk at the start as part of my warm up.
Banger Moves 
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