Today is the Helsinki
Half Marathon. Despite how much I
enjoyed running it last year and that I really
wanted to do it again, I'm not doing it this year.
The main reason is that, even when I got proper winter
equipment for running in the cold during the last
months of winter, I wasn't expecting weather to
constantly be under –10° C. That, together with having
moved out from Helsinki's downtown and the comfort
of having Töölöönlahti around the
corner, and having started to regularly swim again,
didn't help me to get started training. Probably next
year I'll give it a try.
But on the upside, I'm quite happy with what swimming
has brought to my life. I never learned to swim
properly when I was a kid. In fact, when I was living
in Dresden and took a Schwimmen zur
Konditionierung class early on Mondays, it was a
complete disaster. I could barely cross the 50m
swimming pool at Freiberger Platz without feeling like
dying and it was hard to keep myself going
frequently. I was feeling completely awful and would
rather skip it than ridicule myself.
Situation has improved a lot since I started to
regularly swim, in September last year. At the
beginning, the situation wasn't much better than back
in Germany. However (and I think that improved
stamina thanks to running was crucial on this), I
could do much better this time. By now, I'm doing
about 3x500m once or twice a week. I've said goodbye
to back pain, I feel way fitter, and all this without
any joint pain, which is a pleasure hard to enjoy when
running.
Anyway, that doesn't mean that I don't run at all.
For instance, on one of my last trips to A Coruña
I ran around
the city by it's seaside. Really cool place to
run.
