In a previous post I referred to “a few puzzle pieces” that came together. One of those pieces is sports. Better put: physical activity. In combination with a vegetarian diet.
In 2017 our house became an empty nest and we decided to find new activities we could perform as a couple. Sitting on our couch watching TV or reading was by no means satisfying. It was my wife who came up with the idea or entering the Four Days Marches event of Nijmegen (“Nimwegen”).
We discovered, starting our training in January of February 2018, that walking 4 times 40 km in four days wouldn’t be a walk in the park. We took this challenge and training seriously. We loved the 2018 and 2019 events. In 2020 we planned to go for 4 times 50 kilometers but the Covid19 virus stood in the way. The same applies in 2021. We have become fond of walking and will enter this event again whenever possible.
In that same year 2018 my wife had decided to up our running game. She had ran 10K’s regularly and wanted to go for a half marathon, the Amsterdam edition. Although I had not ran in ages because of knee complaints, I decided to try and join her. I purchased good running shoes, visited a physical therapist who prescribed specific exercises to avoid knee pains and equipped myself with a Garmin sports watch.
There was plenty time between the 160Km walk in Nijmegen in July and the half marathon in October. I followed the training plan that my Garmin watch supported. We both succesfully completed our first 21Km run that year.
Since then we have combined walking and running trainings and have again upped our game. In 2019 we completed the full marathon, in Amsterdam. Still sticking to a plant-based diet.
FYI in October 2020 I ran an marathon in my neighbourhood, setting my PR at 4h15. One doesn’t need official events to train and simulate a competition.
Bottom-line: you can challenge yourself, even beyond 50+. You can push yourself to new physical limits when running on green fuel. I am even convinced that the recovery period following an intense physical activity is shorter for vegetarians compared to eaters of animal proteins.