{"id":21,"date":"2026-07-29T21:59:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T19:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/?p=21"},"modified":"2026-07-29T22:06:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:06:37","slug":"hitting-the-pavement-again-my-running-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/hitting-the-pavement-again-my-running-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Hitting the Pavement Again: My Running Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This post wasn&#8217;t supposed to be published today, but sometimes you just have to get it out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I started running a few years ago, and it was easily the best decision I\u2019ve ever made for my health. I started with a mix of running and walking back in February 2022, right after I decided to quit smoking. Fast forward to today, and I\u2019ve been seriously at it for four and a half years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ve crossed some great milestones along the way: 5 marathons, 3 half-marathons, loads of 10ks, and countless 5ks. But I\u2019m human, and I do take breaks. Sometimes it\u2019s just a few weeks, and other times it stretches into months. In fact, before hitting the road again, my last run was three months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My plan going forward is to write more. I&#8217;m going to start drafting my thoughts and using AI to help polish my posts. The goal is to publish daily, or at least write a draft every day so there isn&#8217;t too much pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A quick tech side-note:<\/strong> I just noticed that you can embed HTML straight from Strava into your own site! Let\u2019s try that out below. This looks incredibly cool, and it would be great to eventually build an app to automate this and push it straight to Facebook or Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I also took a picture and a video while out running in Blouberg today. Check them out below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"strava-embed-placeholder\" data-embed-type=\"activity\" data-embed-id=\"19510575777\" data-style=\"standard\" data-from-embed=\"false\" data-token=\"0dy-Mzu4Lr3QkohUAJKFcTVTV5gI3QDh09N2TSScfBc\"><\/div><script src=\"https:\/\/strava-embeds.com\/embed.js\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"1080\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1920 \/ 1080;\" width=\"1920\" controls src=\"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/20260729_084437-1.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post wasn&#8217;t supposed to be published today, but sometimes you just have to get it out there. I started running a few years ago, and it was easily the best decision I\u2019ve ever made for my health. I started with a mix of running and walking back in February 2022, right after I decided<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link\">\n\t\t\t\t <a href=\"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/2026\/07\/29\/hitting-the-pavement-again-my-running-journey\/\" class=\"link-btn theme-btn\"><span>Read More <\/span> <i class=\"fa fa-caret-right\"><\/i><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26,"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jongi.za.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}