Happy new month, new quarter, new half, dear reader 🥳💃🕺
I hope the second half of the year is off to a great start for you and yours. I kicked mine off with a sub-1h 10K this morning, so best believe mine is off to a rocking start 🤩
I also hope the first half of the year treated you well. Mine was pretty good in and of itself, but compared to H1 2025 it was heaven on earth. H1 2026 was so Christmas-movie good it would not surprise me if I found myself walking slowly through scenic snowfall in a charming hometown I was legally required to return to 😅
In H1 2025 I went from being the emergency contact to being the emergency. On this day last year, I was on day one of Dry July. Today, I have not had a drink for 258 days (and counting). Since turning 38 on 3.8, I have been working on getting my shit together, one day at a time. Now I am elated to tell you that, by every meaningful measure, I have moved from identifying as a person in crisis to one in recovery.
I love to Begin Again, so new quarters and halves provide the perfect opportunity to reassess, recalibrate, realign, reignite… re-everything, really. This one is no different, so this weekend I will set aside some time to review H1. What worked, what did not, and what I need to start, stop, and continue doing.
Today, I want to share an update on the goals I wrote about on my half birthday on February 3rd.
We are still not there with the squats 😫 I got up to 60kgs, but in May I had to dial it back to 40kgs because the heavy weight and heavy running were working against each other. My right knee was getting worse by the day, and since the Nairobi City Marathon was the priority, I did not want to fuck it up so bad that I would have to bow out of the race. I am now at 55kgs, but I am not sure if I will continue working my way up to three reps of 80kgs because I start training for the Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon on my birthday (August 3rd), and that will definitely be the priority as I am aiming for a sub 1:50.
Things are boiling quite nicely with my upper body. I thought pull-ups would be the hardest to pull off (see what I did there 😎), but I am currently at 5 pull-ups 🤩 I have also been consistent with 20 off-the-knee push-ups for almost two months now, so the time has come to attempt clap push-ups. That should be fun to do, but I had better not injure myself in the process, or else I will end up with the use of one – maybe even no – hand(s), for a decision made purely because clap push-ups look so fucking cool. As for handstands… I have not attempted them even once, but hey, there is still a whole half a year left so…
Last but definitely not least, running.
In February, I was not even a month into my running journey, and 138 minutes was such a big fucking deal. But I ran a sub-2 at the Nairobi City Marathon and if there is a feeling I could bottle forever, it is the triumph of crossing the finish line 1 hour, 57 minutes and 15 seconds after the start. It was my NCM debut, so going into it only 3% of me believed I could run a sub-2. I 100% hoped I could, but it was a dream I held verrrrryyy loosely because there was not a single stage in my training that showed me I could actually do it, so only a sliver of me believed in me. And that sliver was on a good day. On the days running was kicking my ass I had sub-zero belief because what do you mean to run a sub-2 I need to run at 5:41 min/km when my average pace is 6:30 for any run longer than 10km. But I did it! I ran 21km with an average pace of 5:32 min/km! Do not ask me how I did it though, as I am still trying to understand that myself 😅 Just know I did. #POWERFUL 😙💪
I will share a detailed recap of my sub-2, but even when I do, just know that I may not be able to fully capture what it did for my self-belief. 2025 was my rock bottom year, and I spectacularly fell out of trust – and love, if I am honest – with myself last year. Now I am full-on walking around like my shit don’t stink 😂 All jokes aside, my sub-2 gave me back something 2024 and 2025 had knocked out of me: the belief that there is nothing I cannot do, provided I put in the work. Knowing that the Universe can, and will, give me more than I expect is precisely what I needed going into this era between 38 and 83 that I crowned the second phase of my life. My sub-2 was exactly the sign I needed to continue fearlessly pursuing what sets my soul on fire. So let’s fucking go H2!!!
Lwile the Leo 