The Breaking Point

Following up on my move to Sydney, I want to dive a bit deeper into exactly how my running journey began. It is easy to look back now and assume it was a sudden burst of inspiration, a grand New Year's resolution, or a profound desire to get healthy. The reality is much less glamorous. It actually started with a heated, frustrating argument in our apartment.

It was sometime near the end of 2016. We were living in a beautiful part of Sydney, but our daily routine was still deeply stuck in the sedentary habits we had developed back in Zagreb. We would work, come home, sit on the couch, and do very little else. My partner had finally reached her boiling point with our complete lack of activity.

She was angry and visibly frustrated. She bluntly pointed out the absurdity of our situation, saying that not only had we not properly explored the vibrant city we had just moved across the world to live in, but we hadn't even bothered to walk around our own immediate neighborhood. She practically begged me to just put on my shoes and go out for a simple, low-effort walk with her to get some fresh air.

My response to her plea perfectly, painfully captured exactly where my mindset was at the time. I was sitting there, completely comfortable in my inactivity. I literally took a cigarette out of my mouth, looked at her with genuine confusion, and asked, "Why would we do that?"

The Solo Walk and The App Search

Unsurprisingly, my dismissive response was not well received. Frustrated and unwilling to let my laziness dictate her evening, she grabbed her keys, walked out the door, and went for a walk by herself. When she came back, she just said she was going to start running. Over the next few days, she went out for a couple of short runs on her own.

Sitting on the couch and watching her take that initiative, watching her actively try to better her health while I continued to do nothing, finally broke through my thick wall of laziness. The guilt and the realization of my own stagnation set in. I decided it was time to drop the excuses and join her.

But before we actually hit the pavement together, we needed a plan. Or at least, I needed a way to measure exactly how much suffering I was about to endure. I recall that I spent a lot of time looking at different smartphone apps to track our running progress. I wanted to see how far we were actually going, how fast we were moving, and have a tangible record of our efforts. After testing a few different options and reading reviews, we settled on Strava, mostly because of its clean interface and detailed route mapping.

Sunday, 18 December 2016

That brings me to the very first run I ever formally recorded. The date is burned into my digital history. It was a Sunday evening, December 18, 2016, just after 7:40 PM. The intense heat of the Australian summer day was just starting to break, leaving a warm, thick evening air. We headed out the door, aiming our route towards the Bennelong Bridge area in Sydney.

I was still a regular smoker and completely, utterly out of shape. I was carrying around 90kg on a frame that used to comfortably hold 70kg. The raw data numbers from that first Strava record tell the whole, painful story.

I managed to cover exactly 3.65 kilometers. It took me just over 24 minutes of actual moving time. My average pace was a grinding 6:39 per kilometer. To an experienced runner, those numbers might look like a casual warm-up jog. To me, on that specific Sunday evening, it felt like an impossible, herculean task.

It was incredibly difficult. Within the first kilometer, my lungs were burning as if I were breathing in hot ash, a direct consequence of years of smoking. My legs felt heavy, uncoordinated, and sluggish. My heart rate was hovering around a frantic 163 bpm for almost the entire duration. There were multiple points where I wanted to just stop, sit down on the pavement, and walk back home. It required every ounce of stubbornness I possessed to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The Aftermath and The Turning Point

Looking at that 3.65 km route map on Strava now, it seems like such a incredibly short, trivial distance. I regularly run five times that far before breakfast now. But on that specific evening, physically crossing that modern bridge over the water felt like a massive, insurmountable challenge.

It was a brutally tough 24 minutes. I was sweating profusely, my chest ached, and I was exhausted. But amidst the physical discomfort, there was a profound sense of clarity. I had done it. I had pushed past my own ridiculous excuses, left the couch, and actually moved my body.

That Sunday evening run didn't instantly turn me into an elite athlete, but it was the exact moment my lifestyle began to fundamentally change. It was the proof I needed that I could break out of my sedentary rut, and it laid the foundation for the active, healthy life I am so grateful for today.