My activity was basically going to a friend’s place on weekends(5 times in total till now) and then for the first 2 weekends, we ran 5 km and recorded our progress through the Nike running app. After that, we cycled for 3 weekends(varying distance). Running was very straightforward, we just started from my friend’s house and then ran for as long as possible until we hit the 2.5 km mark. After a 2 minute rest, we ran all the way back. Cycling was much more complicated than this since cycling generally covers a much larger distance. For our first trip, I cycled to my friend’s building and then from there, all the way to Surat airport and back which is roughly 23 km. For our second trip, we cycled significantly less than the first trip because a complication arose with one of my friends’ cycles which forced us to keep the trip short. Even though this was the case I still managed to complete at least 15 km. The second trip was different also because we did not have a set location in mind, we recorded distance through the strava app and explored the various roads and alleys near both the ends of the pal-umra bridge. For the third trip, we decided to step it up and challenge ourselves by significantly increasing the distance. For this last trip, we cycled all the way from our homes and took a long route to Fountainhead School and back which was roughly ___ km.
The intent behind this experience was to test myself and evaluate my own fitness because it is a key part of staying healthy and maintaining good overall well-being. Through this experience, I have come to realize that my endurance and my fitness are satisfactory and that has helped boost my confidence. Knowing my strengths(endurance) is very important because knowing what you are good at and what you are not good at is the first step toward personal growth. It is impossible to improve as a person without an evaluation of what needs to be improved. I would have liked to be more experienced with outdoor running since that would have made the first significantly less difficult.
During this activity, perseverance and commitment were the most important traits I needed. While running a lot of the time I wanted to just slow down and walk or just sit for 2 min but I persevered in order to improve my endurance. Since these activities were long distance, it can also sometimes become boring or uninteresting to continue but staying committed to the run or the cycling trip was essential to the experience. This is especially true for the first run that we went on, it was excruciating because we picked a horrible time to start it. Running in the evening was very tough, exhausting, and extremely hot. Staying committed to runs and cycling trips wasn’t initially easy for me but journey by journey I improved and in the end I was able to persevere for a long ___km trip.
The highlight of this experience was definitely the last trip when we woke up especially early(4 A.M.) and we cycled toward a rural area so during the trip we got to stop and marvel at the beautiful sunrise as we were surrounded by greenery. This experience of being successful definitely brought me a sense of accomplishment and a confidence boost because I realized that my physical well-being was appropriate and healthy and that I also improved my mental endurance. I also developed my principality because I had to garner the mental fortitude to persevere and commit to the long-distance physical activities that were running and cycling. If I could ever redo this experience again then the one thing I would change is that I would always go for the activities extremely early in the morning since that is when they are enjoyable. I learned my lesson from the first run that evening running is very painful and since then I have always gone on early morning runs and cycling trips(5:30 A.M.).
All in all, this experience has been a good way for me to test and improve my physical fitness along with enjoying the process. It has forced me to grow both mentally and physically since it taught me to appreciate the world around me.
