The race is over and I’ve had time to reflect upon my journey and it’s been quite a journey.
10km is a long distance. So to complete it in one go is an achievement. With my mind focused and ready on Sunday, I completed the race. Recovering from an illness, which stopped any training for the past week, I completed the race in 1hr and 1minute. No I’m not winning any places with that time, but I’ve achieved what I wanted. I conquered the mental barrier and I ran for climate change. On that note, I’ve also done some personal changes to reduce my footprint. I’ve changed light globes, I buy less plastic, recycle more, etc. All these changes have resulted in 1.5 earths to support me. That’s a reduction of half an earth!
Now the race is over I’ll continue my journey to reduce my footprint, but I’ll stop running for a while. I’m sure I’ll soon have some other green journey to work towards.
Kasia @ WWF
Embarking on two journey’s can prove to be difficult. That’s exactly what i found when i tried to train for the Nike human race and take a trip to Borneo, Malaysia.
In the past 3 weeks my training for the race has taken a backseat and instead I’ve tried to keep my fitness level up.
Read more…
I’ve done it! I ran 10km over the weekend for the first time. To be honest, i had my doubts about whether i actually could do a whole 10km. But i did. I even improved my average pace from 7.5 min/km to 6.2 min/km. I’m not sure what that really means in the running world, but i’m pretty happy with the result. Now that i know i can do the run, I’ll be concentrating on keeping my fitness up and improving my time. I’m hoping to get down to about 5 min/km, but that might be wishful thinking.
In the past week, since i’ve looked at my carbon footprint, my shopping habits have changed. I now look critically at anything i buy and opt for the least amount of packaging. I’m washing out jars and tins and I’m recycling all plastic material. I’m also now more aware of how often I leave lights on in the house and how I drive everywhere. Right now i’m looking at other ways i can reduce my carbon footprint apart from recycling plastic. Ill let you know what i come up with.
Kasia @ WWF
Nearly a week has passed since I joined up to the Nike Human Race. Training is coming along nicely. My biggest hurdle is being able to run for a long distance without getting too bored. Luckily my iPod helps me out, giving me a little swing to each step.
I’ve been very impressed with the Nike+ program on my iPod. I love how you can set targets (time or distance) and it provides updates on the speed you are travelling and how much further you have left to go. It’s also really cool how you can plug your iPod into your computer, connect it with your Nike+ account and see a visual graph of how you did in the run. You can then see when you slow down, or if you do at all!
As part of training for this race I decided to look at what climate change means. For my first step, I took a look at my carbon footprint using WWF’s footprint calculator. I was astonished that my current lifestyle uses 2 earths! The footprint calculator allows you to pledge certain reductions in your lifestyle and shows the impact these pledges will have.
My pledge for the coming weeks is to purchase products that use less packaging or are made out of 100% (PCR) recycled material. This will lower my impact to 1.7 earths. In the week of the Nike Human Race (31st of August) I’ll re-do my footprint calculation and see if I was able to reduce my impact to 1.7 earths.
Good luck to everyone else who is training. Today I will be trying my first 10km run.
Kasia @ WWF
Hi! I’m Kasia, WWF’s online manager and Nike’s newest entrant in the Nike Human Race.
Having recently moved back to Sydney from my Queensland permaculture hobby farm, I’m actively looking at ways I can further reduce my footprint. Working with WWF and its inspiring people, I see the amazing effort put into conserving our natural environment. Out of the office, I’m usually found in the great outdoors… the remoter the better.
I’m not a runner, but when I heard about the Nike Human Race I thought running with a million other people from around the world, united in making a difference for themselves and the three charities, was a great chance for me to get fit while I also make lifestyle changes to reduce my impact on the environment.
Follow my journey as I train for the Nike Human Race and run for WWF.
Kasia @ WWF
