The 5k Voyage For Beginners

I was recently watching a Heinekin video on Youtube, part of their upcoming Voyage campaign. It got me wondering about how we approach 5k running and what sort of voyage it is for us.

What kind of metaphoric voyage might a 5k run be for us? And where might that voyage end?

Some people may be uber-social, uber-successful, uber-intelligent. Whatever. But they maybe have always wanted to do some physical challenge or other. It could be climbing Ben Nevis, running a marathon (very hard), completing an IronMan (Uber hard!), doing a charity walk. Often some of those are simply too daunting or require too much of a commitment in terms of training, planning or simple logistics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOrHICm1744

So it seems that for many people, as evidenced by the obvious success of parkrun, that running a 5k is the new start of the physical voyages that many people from all walks of life seem to be taking. Literally hundreds of thousands of different people have completed a parkrun over the last few years. Let’s face it, a free Saturday morning 5k run is much more accessible than, say, the London Marathon that you might not even get a place on. So for these starter athletes the voyage may simply end at the finish line. Job done. Box ticked. End of.

Or.

Or it might lead to something better, bigger and more longer lasting. Perhaps another the following week to try and do it just a little bit faster? I know lots of people like this who kept coming back and, naturally, getting fitter and fitter.

So maybe they thought their voyage would end at the finish line. But once the results came through at home a spark was lit. Perhaps 30:10 minutes represented a challenge of doing it another 11 seconds faster. Achievable, for sure.

This might go on for months (or years!). Faster and faster, fitter and fitter. Or maybe just a bit of friendly fun week after week and chats with more and more friendly people. Community.

Another voyage of discovery throughout the local people.

Perhaps there was adversity ovecoming injury or illness. Lots of stories for sure.

One common thread though is the individual journeys. Some interesting, some mundane. Perhaps most are important to those that embarked on them.

Thoughts?