...I have officially run my first 10K. It wasn't the greatest run and I missed my target time by 8 minutes, but I did it. I ran (most of) the 10K. And you know what? I loved it. Every minute of it. I abandoned my 5:1 goal pretty early on because when you still have the energy to run and there's throngs of people, trying to stop for your 1 minute walk is difficult. Instead, I set distance goals and then I'd push myself a little farther. I'd pick a spot far off (but not too far) and then once I reached it, I'd pick another spot, and another, and another, until I was out of breath and I really did need to stop. I managed to convince myself to run entire kilometres that way. Then a nagging little thing happened: a blister which I had noticed on Friday decided to balloon into a huge pulsating pain in my left foot and it left me speed walking most of the last 3.5K It was frustrating because when I would start to run, it would ache and ache, and without anyone to push me past that pain, I just let it dictate "no running". As a result, I missed my goal of 1h20mins by 8 minutes. A thousand shoulda, coulda, woulda's race through your brain when you realise that you missed it by that much: if I had just said 'screw it' that last K and run anyways, if I had just bothered to do something about it when I found the small blister on Friday, if, if, if...
Then I remembered something: I just ran a 10K. Four months ago, I would have scoffed at the idea. Four months ago, I was content just to walk it. Four months ago, I thought running was the past time of already fit people. Four months ago, I decided to do something a little crazy. Four months ago, I would have let missing my time goal deter me. Four months ago, but not now.
What can I do in another four?
2 comments:
Hey nice blog and looks like you're well on your way to Chilkoot. You did better than all those people who didn't even attempt it but you also had a faster time than 2452 people who finished after you. Even in your category of female 30-34 representing 662 runners there were 20% behind you so I think you kicked ass.
Next year you're going to demolish this year's time and thanks to this blog, I'm going to hold you to it :-)
Thanks for the pep talk, Marc (and for doing the math). Next year I'll be standing behind you and Mike at the starting line trash talking your running skills ;)
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