I’ve pretty much assessed this race about a thousand times in my head, mainly connected to feelings of frustration and disappointment but it’s a well known fact those feelings get you nowhere.
Let’s have a chat…
I was excited about this race as it was my first in years(!) plus the fact it was relatively local and advertised as ‘fast and flat’ but they forgot to mention at 9km there was the meanest hill I’ve ever seen (okay maybe that’s over the top) and if you go down…you have to go up (here I go..stating the obvious)
I got there bright and early, parked with ease and took a wonder around to visit every single toilet, peak in the shops at ‘Xscape’ and check out the start line. As time was on my side I did my standard one mile steady warm up before waiting and was feeling pretty good. There where 3 races going on that day starting with the 5km (It was wonderful to cheer/clap them all on), the 10km and half marathon and the sun was out making the mood just that little bit better.
So then we started and I was feeling wonderful, my leg’s where working with ease and I was keeping what felt like a good strong pace…
At just over 5km I checked my garmin as it clocked over to 25mins and realized I’d paced a lot faster than I’d planned, so I slowed down and enjoyed the next mile at a 9 minute pace which was my planned pace for the whole race (and the pace I’d happily trained at). But at 4 miles I was uncomfortably hot so I stopped to take my top off and got in a complete muddle with my headphones (never normally run with music) and my race number and lost a minute or so getting sorted.
I was now completely flustered but started up again yet much too fast and I just couldn’t get a happy or consistent pace, I was beating myself up about the fact I was losing time and hating the whole experience. If I was on my normal Sunday run I’d have been fine however I put humongous amounts of pressure on myself and therefore I stopped racing previously because of this anxiety that completely takes over.
Then the unforgivable happened, we approached a hill and others started walking which led to me walking and completely losing my pace/zone even more. I carried on with a mist of sadness that I’d not paced myself correctly or taken the time to take a step back and slow right down for the hill to build back up into a happy steady zone…
I crossed the line in a seriously disappointing 57 minutes, collected my medal and water from the lovely volunteers and returned home.
When I got home and looked at my stats I realized that I’d paced my first two miles at 8.00 and 8.02 which was far to fast for me to hold over 10km therefore I’d definitely set a 5km PB but in the mix of things ruined a 10km PB. I went out and walked 2miles to clear my head and enjoy more of the sunshine, unfortunately I’d worked myself up into such a frenzy of stress over the run (sleeping fitfully the night before) I ended up rather sick and on the sofa in my pj’s for the rest of the day.
Then I thought ‘Why do I let these things upset me so much?’, ‘I know I’ve ran faster so I don’t have to prove anything to myself?’, ‘My slow time is a personal best to many people’ and ‘It’s only a Sunday run’. You may wonder why I’m sharing all this in a race report but I blog from the heart, not for money or to boost my ego and I’m a human who makes mistakes and most certainly is not perfect.
That’s why I’ve taken a picture of Rowdy the dog wearing my medal, because no matter what he always has that same expression, he’s soft and cuddly and like all good toy dog’s he makes people smile and that’s what running 10km in the sun should do. Make you smile.Â
Did you race this weekend? My Twitter feed was full of PB’s and your all bonkers awesome!
Katie
x
P.s
Just got to mention the highlight of the race was this young lad at about 6km who set up his drum kit at the bottom of his drive way and drummed along to us running past, this made me smile so much *Go Drummer Boy!*