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Thursday, May 29, 2025

Shelly Colai ... Conquering her first half marathon

by

Dr Safeeya Mohammed
543 days ago
20231203

Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

Run­ning a half marathon is a buck­et list chal­lenge for all fit­ness en­thu­si­asts. The sheer de­ter­mi­na­tion nec­es­sary to con­quer the 21.1 kilo­me­tres starts well be­fore the day of the race. Whether you are a sea­soned run­ner or a ‘new­bie’, cross­ing that fin­ish line of your first half marathon is a mo­ment that goes down in your his­to­ry book and be­comes part of your ac­co­lades for life!

WE con­grat­u­late all the par­tic­i­pants of the UWI SPEC In­ter­na­tion­al Half Marathon held re­cent­ly on No­vem­ber 19.

The glob­al dis­rup­tion of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic re­sult­ed in a three-year hia­tus of the UWI SPEC In­ter­na­tion­al Half-Marathon, mak­ing this year’s 17th in­stal­ment even more sig­nif­i­cant for all the par­tic­i­pants. Over the past 16 years, this es­teemed flag­ship event has wit­nessed sub­stan­tial growth, es­ca­lat­ing from a mere 300 par­tic­i­pants in 2004 to an im­pres­sive 1,600 in 2019. This year, the run­ners did not dis­ap­point with more than 1,000 reg­is­tra­tions record­ed.

The run­ning jour­ney

Shelly Co­lai, a moth­er of four, an en­tre­pre­neur, and an avid run­ner, pre­vi­ous­ly had more than 25 5Ks and two 10Ks un­der her belt. The next chal­lenge in her run­ning jour­ney was the pres­ti­gious UWI SPEC In­ter­na­tion­al Half Marathon.

How­ev­er, just con­sid­er­ing it, Co­lai ad­mit­ted that when the sug­ges­tion came from a col­league with­in the run­ning fra­ter­ni­ty, her anx­i­ety spiked.

“Am I fit enough? Can I en­dure? What if I fail? I thought it in­sane that I just start­ed my run­ning jour­ney and con­sid­er­ing the half marathon.

“Short­ly af­ter the an­nounce­ment of the race, my col­leagues from the run­ning club prompt­ed me to sign up for the race and ac­tu­al­ly one of the mem­bers reg­is­tered me, even though I was in no way ready men­tal­ly, phys­i­cal­ly or oth­er­wise.”

An­oth­er mem­ber of the run­ning fra­ter­ni­ty, Christo­pher Williams, said, “This is an ad­ven­ture, chal­lenge your­self, why do an­oth­er 5K? What would be the chal­lenge? Take on the half marathon and en­joy the race!

“And in that in­stant, my mind­set was switched, I want­ed the ex­pe­ri­ence, the medal and I want­ed to sup­port all my friends at the race, and I fig­ured to do that then I would def­i­nite­ly have to do the race. I start­ed si­lenc­ing the bat­tle in my mind and was will­ing to go the dis­tance in prepa­ra­tion to be able to com­pete and com­plete the half marathon.”

Her why al­so came from a place of lived agony.

“Af­ter my moth­er suf­fered a stroke, she re­mained im­mo­bile. See­ing my usu­al­ly ac­tive moth­er now un­able to en­joy the qual­i­ty of life she pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pe­ri­enced, I de­cid­ed I must start my fit­ness jour­ney. I made a promise to her, that I would still be run­ning races and marathons at age 66!”

The prepa­ra­tion com­menced, but the in­juries came

“In the be­gin­ning, it was ex­treme­ly nerve-wrack­ing, each day that passed I would con­tem­plate my de­ci­sion to do this half marathon. This led me to seek ad­vice from the run­ning fra­ter­ni­ty. These per­sons are now my fam­i­ly, a bunch of won­der­ful hu­man be­ings. I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful for their sup­port, the right ad­vice and en­cour­age­ment in prepa­ra­tions for this UWI half.

“My phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty was hin­dered due to a knee in­jury that oc­curred while train­ing. I thought this was it, there goes my plan! My per­son­al train­er ad­vised me to stop run­ning im­me­di­ate­ly and rec­om­mend­ed the nec­es­sary re­cov­ery ex­er­cis­es and strength train­ing. More im­por­tant­ly, I had to switch my fo­cus to a new re­cov­ery plan. The dis­ap­point­ment was re­al, to say the least, but I switched gears, and took the ad­vice of my train­er and my new run­ning fam­i­ly, fo­cussing on rest and re­cov­ery.

“An­oth­er run­ning col­league, Car­los Perez, in­vit­ed me to do nu­mer­ous pow­er walk­ing hill hikes along­side him to fur­ther as­sist in the heal­ing process and I made this part of the train­ing plan for the UWI half. I switched up my train­ing and en­sured I was hav­ing the right and de­sired nu­tri­tion and a lot of flu­ids for hy­dra­tion. I al­so used my el­lip­ti­cal to as­sist with en­durance.

“As time pro­gressed and I felt my body heal­ing, and get­ting stronger, I took the de­ci­sion to reg­is­ter for some up­com­ing races, I thought I would go out and just walk those races, if need be, as the fit­ness bug had bit me and I was def­i­nite­ly hooked, even if I was walk­ing.

“As every­one knows when a run­ner sees as­phalt we will run. I did a 6.5KM race in St He­le­na and I emerged suc­cess­ful, plac­ing as the fourth over­all fe­male and was award­ed a tro­phy for the first place fe­male (40-59 age group cat­e­go­ry). This was such an over­whelm­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. This al­so prompt­ed me to re­alise the im­por­tance and ben­e­fits of full re­cov­ery be­fore com­ing back out to run.”

The day of the half marathon

“I was in­deed ho­n­oured to run along­side the best ath­letes in the coun­try and by ex­ten­sion the Caribbean. All my friends and club­mates looked quite com­fort­able at the start line, with no out­ward ex­pres­sion of ner­vous­ness and anx­i­ety. This was rather in­tim­i­dat­ing but af­ter ex­press­ing how I felt, even the best and elite ath­letes shared that they al­so were in­deed ner­vous and weren’t sure if they had pre­pared enough. We were com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing each oth­er and com­plet­ing the half but hav­ing some fun along the way.

“I thought to my­self that I was about to com­plete the most phys­i­cal­ly, chal­leng­ing task of my life thus far, and while I was ex­treme­ly ner­vous, this quote stuck with me: ‘Don’t com­pare your in­sides with some­one else’s out­sides.’

“When I crossed the fin­ish line, that wor­ry that I felt all morn­ing trans­lat­ed in­to feel­ings of eu­pho­ria and tri­umph! I just com­plet­ed my first 21.1 kilo­me­tres, my first half marathon!”

Ad­vice to new run­ners

“A half marathon is not a short or easy dis­tance to cov­er, but it is def­i­nite­ly not im­pos­si­ble for a new run­ner!

These were a few things that I did to as­sist me in en­sur­ing I com­plet­ed my goal–con­quer­ing the half marathon and while the list be­low is not all-en­com­pass­ing, I feel pret­ty cer­tain, these points will keep you on track.”

1. Be con­sis­tent

“En­sure that you are run­ning and putting in the work. To be con­sis­tent is to al­ready com­plete the race. When the in­jury hap­pened, we craft­ed an­oth­er train­ing plan that in­clud­ed strength train­ing cou­pled with retro walk­ing (to im­prove knee strength and sup­port) and I de­pend­ed on my el­lip­ti­cal to as­sist me with en­durance.”

2. Cross train

“Cross-train­ing in­creas­es strength and mus­cle co­or­di­na­tion, im­prov­ing your over­all car­dio­vas­cu­lar health among oth­er great ben­e­fits. I would par­tic­u­lar­ly train two days a week main­ly on flex­i­bil­i­ty and mo­bil­i­ty in my com­mu­ni­ty, to im­prove the range of mo­tion in my joints with my per­son­al train­er.

Hills. I swear by hills. We are blessed in Trinidad with a few very beau­ti­ful cours­es/train­ing grounds; use them. The most pop­u­lar, La­dy Chan­cel­lor in Port-of-Spain and Track­ing Sta­tion at Ch­aguara­mas, are my ul­ti­mate favourite places to train with friends. Hills strength­en the leg mus­cles, al­low build­ing that en­durance and this par­tic­u­lar­ly helped me in the lead-up to the half marathon. It is not about speed on climb­ing the hills, but prop­er form and a gen­tle jog back down­wards will un­de­ni­ably make you run faster on flat sur­faces. The best of all, they dou­ble as a strength train­ing work­out.”

3. Nu­tri­tion

“Hav­ing a bal­anced di­et high in pro­tein not on­ly helps main­tain a healthy im­mune sys­tem but al­so en­hances per­for­mance. Two weeks lead­ing up to the UWI half I con­sumed a high-carb and high-pro­tein di­et with whole grains, oats, fruits and veg­eta­bles. I ramped up my in­take of vi­t­a­mins (zinc, D3 and mag­ne­sium) for mus­cle sup­port and I en­joyed my dai­ly ba­nana (potas­si­um in­take) to com­bat cramp­ing ef­fects on race day. Please take the health­care pro­fes­sion­al’s ad­vice of avoid­ing oily and fried foods and don’t for­get to main­tain your hy­dra­tion where nec­es­sary, as prop­er nu­tri­tion and hy­dra­tion will de­lay the on­set of fa­tigue.”

4. Your tribe

“Hav­ing pos­i­tive/like-mind­ed friends/fam­i­ly run­ning along­side you helps tremen­dous­ly with long runs, gives the right added so­cial sup­port, helps with ac­count­abil­i­ty on the run and makes run­ning even more en­joy­able.

With the in­creased crime in our beloved coun­try, this re­mains a de­ter­rent for many women in­clud­ing my­self on train­ing/run­ning days. There­fore, I would rec­om­mend (es­pe­cial­ly fe­males) that you re­cruit a work­out part­ner. I do not do any train­ing or run­ning alone dur­ing the wee hours of the morn­ing or late at night.”

5. Your mind­set is every­thing

“Be­lieve in your­self, be­lieve that you can do it and you will!

I was un­sure at first af­ter reg­is­ter­ing for the half marathon if I in­deed had the re­silience, agili­ty and tenac­i­ty for the race. I called the race di­rec­tor one month be­fore the race and asked him to change my reg­is­tra­tion to the 5K be­cause I was not get­ting enough time to train and doubt­ed if I could have done it. The very next day I called him back and I told him please do not change the reg­is­tra­tion, I do be­lieve that I can do it!

Start some­thing, go on the as­phalt and do some­thing three days a week, your old­er self will thank you. This is an in­vest­ment that you would be hap­py to gain the re­turns in your old­er years. Come 2024, it’s me vs my last best record.

My ul­ti­mate goal is to at­tempt the longer dis­tances in 2024 and to give that sup­port to oth­ers in the run­ning com­mu­ni­ty. If I can do it, you can too.”


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