Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Blog and challanges summary

I started this blog to write about things that interests me. At the beginning it was a little bit about motivation and running [here]. I set some goals for myself to achieve [here] and event create a page that stores all my successes and failures [here].

Today I would like to end this part of my webpage so I will do a quick summary of how I failed hard and succeed in some of the challenges.

Challenges summary - failure part

Lets start with the bad news - in both of the running challenges, namely:

  • run half marathon in 2015
  • run marathon in 2015

I failed. Last time, that I wrote about running [here] I mentioned that I got injured. Unfortunately the recovery period was long (I tried running after 2/3/4/5 weeks and my knee was still hurting). I took some pills but it did not help. I did some exercises instead - ride a bicycle, did over 100 km while cross country skiing. The break from running made it impossible to take part in half marathon in Poznan in April. I started running in April and gradually increased the intensity (I read a book about running during while being injured). Unfortunately in July my knee started hurting again and I had to pause running again. This shattered the dreams of marathon for me.

On the bright side of things - I bought a bike and I enjoyed riding it. I did almost 1500 kms last year, while in previous years I did not ride at all. I was even able to ride over 100 km in one day which I am proud of :) All in all despite not fulfilling my plans I enjoyed the year trying different sports.

Additional note for other people that are starting running or are planning to - do not force yourself to much. I know it is nice to exhaust yourself after a long day in front of the computer but for the sake of your health run slowly. Really. Or read a book or run with somebody at pace that you can talk comfortably.

Challenges summary - I don't know what it is part

I started the blog to express myself to the world. To hone my writing skills. To share my ideas. I challenged myself to keep the blog up with regular updates. It is still alive. Maybe not exactly alive and kicking but also not on the verge of death I guess. What do you think my dear reader? Was this challenge a success or was it a failure?

Challenges summary - I did something right part

At the beginning of the year somebody showed me a program for a mobile phone that allows learning the foreign languages. I am talking about Duolingo. It is really well executed application and what is most important it is free (and can be used on both mobile phone and the PC thanks to being a webpage). I started doing the exercises and today I achieved 100 days streak (which was my goal). That means I did the necessary exercises each and every day starting from 4th of January. I finished all the lessons a while ago and now I only did repetitions and it is less interesting that new lessons.
I would like to encourage everybody to try the Duoliong and the method of learning by small but frequent exercises. On the downside there is only one level of Polish-English course and is rather simple.

TL; DR

When I started this blog I set myself a few goals (challenges). Today I revised how I fare - I described my failures and successes. Now I retire this part of the webpage - no more challenges for me (at least for now). The archived ones can be found here.

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