Yep. Something I would never thought I’d do, in fact. Living here, seeing all the people exercising, jogging, running made it nearly difficult to resist that change in lifestyle! That’s the really good thing about Sweden. If you wanna change your lifestyle, it’s a really good place, because motivation is everywhere around!
So, here’s my story.
I’ve always hated running. Whatever running tests and competitions at school were always the worst torture for me. Needless to say, my stamina has always been pretty terrible. Even as a kid I hated running, and always had stamina problems. And it’s not much better now, in fact, it’s even worse. I’m not an athletic person in any aspect, but I’ve always enjoyed being physically active – sound like a contradiction, doesn’t it? The this is, I always had a limited spectrum of activities I enjoyed. For example, ever since I started I absolutely loved snowboarding, even when I could barely catch my breath after walking uphill through the snow, when I was learning. I love my longboard, even though it’s not exactly effortless. In school I would always vote playing volleyball. For a good bit of time I also frequented a gym, and I really liked it. I always felt more energized, motivated and overall better afterwards.
But here’s the thing – gym here is INSANELY expensive. Umeå is proud of owning “biggest sports center in the northern Sweden” called IKSU. Monthly membership costs 600 kr, 4 months are 1600 kr with various student discounts, entire year is more “affordable” being 4200 kr, but once purchased there’s no going back. For comparison, for a one of best gyms in my hometown I paid 120-200 kr monthly for a student pass. So despite my awesome plans – I simple cannot afford it. I would love to go to the gym, but with the way I don’t have a job here and live on my family’s earnings, it’s not possible.
Certainly, lack of physical activity has gotten a bit frustrating to me eventually, and running has been “quite” popular recently. Literally, EVERYONE is jogging or running here. It’s insane. It’s quite hard to resist that being a motivation. Even one of my friends here was jogging. So as I’m thinking about it, she mentions I should join her sometime. So I did, once. It wasn’t that terrible, but I still couldn’t see what’s so awesome in running, why people like it so much. The next day my leg muscles hurt so much I could barely walk and move around.
Strangely enough, some days later, I repeated that, and went jogging, and then my legs hurt again. Nonetheless, I decided that since I can’t go to the gym that might be my plan for the summer. When I was home in Poland for two weeks in June I went to a sports store, asked about affordable shoes for running on asphalt (I didn’t want to burn money on something I might end up not using, that’s why I didn’t decide on any recognized brand, and not buying them in Sweden). Eventually, I put the shoes to use, when the weather started being nice and sunny.
My legs no longer hurt the next day! And that’s all because of proper shoes! I couldn’t believe how much shoes have changed! The activity itself was still slightly annoying, but I was (and still am) thinking that at least I’m doing something good for my body, and finally getting some physical exercise. Ever since I’ve kept that as a habit and I’ve been jogging everyday for the last two weeks (I think), with the exceptions of days with crappy weather or when I went to play beach volleyball.
One night I couldn’t really sleep and decided to go jogging at 5:50 AM. The scenery just blew me away. The silence in the air, sun on the other side of the hill. It felt just like in a movie. Pretty magical moment, I must admit. So in all that jogging hype that’s what truly got me. I will never manage to get up so early though, and I’m trying not to stay up so long either, so I will just keep in mind the memory of that.
My stamina is still crap. However, I managed a 25-minutes jog today, which is my record so far. I’m quite proud of that. Nonetheless, I wanna keep up the good habit, even though I don’t particularly enjoy it. Still, having nothing else to do outdoors, that’s my only chance to go outside and get some more air and sun. And then I also get to take some pictures, on which I manage to look better or at least more athletic than I really am. Surprisingly to some – it serves as a perfectly valid motivation to me.
PS. There’s also that Oatmeal comic. Running’s been so popular recently, it’s just impossible to escape it. And The Oatmeal is really awesome so it worked as additional motivation to me as well.
and i'm in sweden 