For someone who doesn’t run at all, running 6000 km may seem a difficult task. On the other hand, we have the world’s best runner, Eliud Kipchoge, who runs around 10000 km every year. He is not alone, many of the world’s top long run athletes are running similar distances every year. It took me more than 5 years to run a total of 6000 km. Therefore at this moment, I am not a great runner but not a beginner anymore. Hopefully, before the end of 2022, I will reach the 10000 km milestone.

Recently, I came across an article about a Chinese woman, Zheng Churan, who runs 10000 km to save her husband from political jail. She shares her status on Twitter. By this day, the end of June 2020, she is close to 900 kilometers mark.

But, besides huge performance differences, Eliud Kipchoge and Zheng Churan have something in common. They both run for a cause. In the case of Kipchoge, he runs to prove that no human is limited. To demonstrate that, last year, in Vienna, he did finish the marathon distance in less than two hours for the first time in history, thus breaking a record that was considered impossible for humans.

In my opinion, running for a cause makes this activity less painful and gives you more motivation. Somebody may follow your example and the quality of their life will improve. Happy people will make a better world.

Since my previous blog post, and until mid-May, in Romania, like many other countries, we had a lockdown. The good part was that you were allowed to run around your home if you carried with you a declaration about where you live and where you run. This helped me keep running although there was no normal training.

I would like to share here two personal stories from the time of lockdown about health and running, maybe they will help others in the same situation.

I have an allergy for pollen for many years, each spring I start sneezing and I have difficulties in breathing. The treatment is to take for 10 nights XYZAL or Claritine and I feel very well. Unfortunately this year the treatment did not work although I tried both Claritine and XYZAL. I am not sure why yet, I have a few possible reasons to test next year. As a consequence mouth breathing was my only available option. Because of that, I was not able to sleep at all during the nights. However, I noticed that after a 10km or an hour of running I was breathing normally for two days. Then, I had to mouth breathe again. The change after every run was really impressive. It did happen all the times and it had the same effect. I’ve tried to find something similar over the internet. Similar problems or about running helping in case of allergies but I failed to find relevant information. I shared my experience with various runners but they did not hear about that either. Except for a friend who said that he experienced the same behavior in a similar situation. If someone knows about the problem I mentioned here or wants to find more information about this you can send me a message. After a few weeks, the problem totally disappeared. I took no other medicines than the ones mentioned above.

The second problem was that I got a painful callus on my left sole. I’ve never experienced that before. It seemed that I had a small grit in my flesh in that area. Every step I made hurt me. It was more painful when I walked barefoot at home than when I ran with shoes on. The running shoes were Adidas Energy Boost and were looking really well although I have used them for more than 600 km. It was hard to suspect that they caused the problem since I had no issues by using them for so long. It did not hurt me much when I ran with those shoes on.

I’ve tried changing the running shoes with a new pair of Energy Boost which I bought for some time because I was very happy running with the current ones. Nothing changed, the pain was there and kept staying with me. In the end, I chose to use two pairs of shoes: Adidas Adizero 3 for running less than 10km and Adidas Boston 7 for long runs. In time, the pain went away and I feel well now.

My advice for junior runners is to change the running shoes whenever they see a small problem with their feet that might be caused by the shoes. If you run more than 600 km with that pair of shoes consider replacing them even if they still look good.

I would like to end this post in a positive manner and mention that in June I ran 195 km which would translate to an average of 6.5 km/day or 4 miles per day during a month. This is my best distance in a month ever. I have no pictures for this article but I added pictures from my runs on Strava.

The best thing is that my health problems were left behind and I can continue all my activities.