I signed up for a 10 mile race at the weekend. Here are my thoughts afterwards:
Do I wear shorts and shorts or shorts and leggings?
Do I run with sports gels or sweeties?
Will there be stingy nettles?
Better eat some pasta. And on the subject of food, seeing as I’m going to be hitting higher mileage in training, it’s probably time to add in a fourth meal as well. Mmmm, breakfast cereal at bedtime….
And then it hit me. Higher mileage. This ain’t no 10k people. It’s 10 miles. MILES. I had let the situation get completely out of hand. I could have entered the 5k Canicross section. With a dog who, in this picture, looks like a fairground waltzer.
Or the 10k? I mean, that’s do-able right? But no, I had managed to enter the 10 mile race. And what had seemed like a good idea at the time began to feel like a very poor life choice five miles into an eight mile run on Monday.
It’s ok, it’s ok. I’m exaggerating slightly. I got to six miles before contemplating getting a lift in the next passing tractor. No. Still I stretch the truth. I got to seven miles before stumbling into a patch of nettles and declaring I couldn’t go on. Right, stop it now. You see, the truth is, I ran a hilly (2 slopes) 10k in Titchmarsh last month in 54.24 which I’m pretty proud of. Powered by self-belief (’I am enough’), new trainers, the promise of a pub lunch and the fact that my kids would not be prepared to hang around for very long, I was pretty much on wheels and ran my fastest 10k ever.
Apart from the time I ran a 10k in 29.28.
That’s actually from the time I ran from home to pick up my husband’s car, forgot to turn off my running watch as I drove home, so it kept timing me and I cannot figure out how to delete it. But it’s just the job for posts like this one.
It’s probably also worth mentioning I considered retiring from 10k a few years ago after finishing a race in … 59.32 …
I put that in for no reason other than to prove practice really does make perfect. I thought I’d never run a sub sixty minute 10k again after that, but here I am, four and a bit years later, still trying and still hurtling around the countryside.
I’ll end on this little nugget. Shall I tell you why I run? That’s easy. Because I find it hard, and although I look cute and sweet and fluffy, I like a challenge and I like to prove to myself I can do it.
Shall I tell you why I race? To show my kids if you want something you have to work for it. When they started school, they couldn’t write. When I start race training, I can’t run fast/far. But you’ve got to build up to these things. Keep practising and working. Keep chip, chip, chipping away.
And know that you’ll get there.
Although if I’d signed up for the 10k instead of the 10 mile, I’d get there a lot faster…
