The COVID-19 pandemic has made us all realize the importance of health and the importance of maintaining good health, which eventually will benefit us during such pandemic times. But at the same time, staying at home lying on the bed during the lockdown, had built up unnecessary laziness in me. CAS was a platform that helped me step out of my comfort and take a step for my fitness, hence I planned out a whole routine for going for a run/walk each day for approximately 20 days. In the middle of this challenge, I also tried to experiment with the kind of shoes I was wearing and its effect on my run. From the start of this challenge, I had a goal of running 5km in a maximum of 35min continuously, with minimal breaks. Even though I pushed myself to achieve this goal during the first half of the challenge, I didn’t stop running and continued to run for a minimum of 20 days with an effort to run for more than 5km in 35min.
LO 1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
Though the experience was motivating for me to take steps toward my fitness goals, this experience also helped me to identify certain weaknesses related to fitness, but now as I am aware of it, I can plan and act on my weaknesses and turn them into my strengths with time. It is important for everyone to understand their health and fitness-related strengths and weakness so that they can work on them and improve their fitness.
LO 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
Moving from limited physical activity to daily runs, the transition was challenging for me to do, as I didn’t have much physical activity to do in lockdown and post it as well, my body wasn’t trained to do high-intensity physical activity hence I had to start slow with 3.27km in 35min with a certain amount of breaks in between. I tried to overcome this challenge by pushing myself to run daily and plan my diet properly with appropriate nutrition. Along with that, I tried changing the type of footwear I was wearing to more comfortable running shoes, as running in tight shoes reduced my performance and made it harder for me to run longer distances in one go. I challenged myself throughout this experience, which was necessary for me to do, in order to push myself further and take steps toward better fitness.
LO 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
The commitment was necessary for this experience in order to achieve my goal of running for 20 consecutive days and achieving an end goal of 5km in 35min which wouldn’t have been possible if I would have had taken frequent breaks as I had to daily push myself to cover further distances each day slowly, in order to achieve this end goal. Though, it wasn’t easy to stay committed because, I did face certain challenges such as body pain during the initial times of this experience, which did make me think of skipping for a day, but tried to stay committed.
Overall, in this experience, I tried to push myself physically and take a step further for my fitness, for which I also developed the learner profile balanced, by taking a step for my health and balancing between my school work and personal fitness. In addition, this experience did help me achieve certain goals which I had set for myself before starting this experience, which eventually motivated me to take further steps for my fitness such as going on a Trek or starting workouts.
