Earlier today Nike Run Clinic held its first LSD at UP Diliman.  This was the first opportunity we had the chance to do so since there are no races this weekend, and what’s good with this special session of the Run Clinic was that it was open to everyone, and even included free Rush Fitness Water and Hidden Spring Mineral Water.  Thank you sponsors!

I was delighted with this LSD because it gave me an opportunity to run not only with my Run Clinic classmates but also with my officemates and also some of my friends from takbo.ph.  Surely it was a very pleasant change of pace and venue and hopefully this happens again during free weekends.  And of course what I really liked about running in UP that you don’t get at Ultra or BHS (Bonifacio High Street) is having taho afterwards.

The LSD session started a few minutes after 6AM.  It was still dark at that time and you can hardly recognize fellow runners so we had to wait a little to have some more light (the street lights were turned off early despite still being dark).  We had all the freedom to choose our route but my running buddy and I chose to have an hour and a half run regardless of distance, in line with our goal of 21K race on March, hence we weren’t sure of our exact run distance (which was at least 10K).

Another thing I liked about this LSD was the presence of our Coaches which were patient enough to guide us in our stretching (we had special treatment because it was just my running buddy and I during our stretching).

Having a running buddy during an LSD is not required but is highly recommended.  Running on your own for more than an hour could be very dull, especially when you’re running in loops, and it’s probably better to have a running buddy than a music player.  Chatting with a buddy also keeps you aware of how deep your breathing is so you know if you should slow down your pace.  This was actually my longest run time-wise but I’d choose this anytime over any few-minute treadmill run because of this “human factor.”

One misconception others have about LSD was that it involves running really long distances so some are intimidated to join one—it’s not!  There’s an “S” there that stands for “slow.”  The “long” part was just a by-product of running slowly (on your comfortable pace) for quite some time.  It could also mean long time—however long or short you want to.

I enjoyed meeting all you guys today, you know who you are (too many to mention) and I hope to have more LSD sessions with you in the future!