Oh hello quads!
Is it just me or does my knee look like a face on the first one?
So on Friday I headed to the airport and caught my flight to Scotland! I was really excited to be headed to the UK and to get to meet some great Tumblrees. I arrived pretty late and headed straight to bed.
On Saturday I got up pretty early and went to watch the junior/5K/10K races. That was pretty fun.. I just love watching running of any kind and it was really warm so a good day for watching. Then I met up with the lovely Jasmine and her boyfriend and we went to collect our numbers. I learned I was starting in the fastest pen which made me go *gulp*
Later we met up with various other Tumblrs and headed to Marie, John, Sonja and Laura’s apartment for some eats and Eurovision. I showed myself as the boring person I am and headed home at around 9 (might even have been 8:30??) to catch some sleep.
Up at 4:45, I had my usual breakfast of oats and banana, dressed, applied by sun cream and bodyglide and headed for the start! All the half marathoners started from the same start at Regent road and when I got there (admitedly about 90 minutes early), the place was deserted. I wandered arounf a little and made a few bathroom trips before dropping off my bag and doing my usual warm up.
Before I knew it the gun went and we were off. My plan was to hold 7:00 mile the whole course so I had to hold back a little on the down hills and push on on the up hills. The first mile marker came and my watch read 7:53. I paniced a little but then assured myself that the marker was in the wrong place. Sure enough, the lap time at the mile 2 marker read 6:06, suggesting the mile 1 marker was wrong. My watch read a 7:00 average the whole way.
From there until about 10 miles was pretty uneventful. I was holding my pace and found myself running with a guy who spent much of the way singing to himself. Once I reached around 10 miles the temperature had risen significantly and it was getting hard to hold the pace. All I could think about was water! I pushed on as much as I could but had to stop to stretch the damn calves at about 12.5 miles, at which point I wondered if i would make it to the end!
Of course I did and I finished with an official time of 1:31:50, a PR by a little under a minute. My 10K split was 43:28, so another PR!
I feel like I should be happier about the result, but I never really trained towards this race, it was just a ‘we’ll see what happens!’. Perhaps a good time is sweeter when there is a lot of hard work behind it! (Or maybe I’m too tired to be really happy!).
I celebrated with some ice cream. That was good. It was really great to meet everyone! Sorry I’m so boring!
Good morning Edinburgh.. Where Starbucks is so cheap!
Here I come Scotland!
I’m stupidly excited!! My packing list is after the jump because it was stupidly long :) Did I miss anything?
What a depressing snack
Running it ABROAD is another.
Holy cow I am SO nervous.
There are about a BILLION things that still need to be arranged.
Eeeeeeeeeeek!
All of this is nothing but the truth.
Ran my first in Switzerland. It was great.. Just remember to enjoy it :)
I’m back - crazy few weeks where I seem to have developed a social life. Included an amazing trip to Germany, a brilliant birthday weekend and cramming 3 weeks worth of work into 3 days. All very fun.
Sorry for not posting, but had that feeling of ‘I’ve left it so long I…
EUUURRRROOOOVIIIISSSSSIIIIOOOOON
PS Do you guys mind if i bring rice to your pasta party? Pasta and I are not good friends.. (I know, what kind of runner am I)
I think you should be very proud of your new PR. 20:07 is an awesome time. You are so close the the sub 20 mark. You are 99.42% of your goal (1200 seconds). You’ll get there. What is you pre-5k race warm up routine?
I usually do a dynamic stretching routine, two miles easy followed by strides and about 100 bathroom trips
Mini 5K race report and my new PR 20:07
