This was me yesterday
This was me yesterday. Burning up a dust cloud behind me.
It was my first ever “official run” and it’s really not even THAT official, just officially timed but it was with a group of 57 other lovelies so it kind of felt like a proper competition run.
I rocked up at the venue (aka the park) and there were a bunch of other people standing around in shiny lycra doing stretches and I was feeling pretty good. I was excited and nervous but most of all, I felt part of the crowd. I knew I could run 5ks so it was no big deal. I was going to RUN this thing. I’d been training. I was not a fraud.
Everyone has been telling me that I’m pretty fast so I thought I was going to do OK, hold my own in the crowd. But what I think they meant is fast for a beginner because out of the 58 people that ran yesterday there were 30 of them in front of me.
I have to say, I hated every damn minute of that run. It felt really hard and I felt like my body just hadn’t shown up that day. I started out fairly high in the pack but then just felt like I was drifting back and back and back.
My head was doing this:
Man I mustn’t be that fast after all.
Am I coming last now? Fuck, I think I’m coming last.
It doesn’t matter if you are coming last, just finish this this.
Man, it hurts, I wanna walk.
You can’t walk, it’s only 5ks. You CAN RUN 5ks. There is NO WAY you are walking in this group of people.
Far out, I can’t believe I’m being overtaken again. I must be running so slowly today.
And so on and so forth for THE WHOLE 5KS.
I made a half hearted attempt to overtake someone in the last 1km but that didn’t last long and she scooted past my arse again before too long. In the end I just sucked it up and kept on running.
It was hard. And I was thinking that, maybe, group runs aren’t for me. What a sook.
I crossed that finish line to find that I’d actually placed 31 in the pack of what I’d estimated to be 40 or 50 people. I now know it was 58 people so I was just under half way.
I had timed it on my running app but forgotten to check it right away so I got an initial rough time of 27:23 for the run. Immediately my heart lifted! That’s actually a PB for me. NO WONDER IT HURT. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad.
And then around midday, the offical time was emailed to me. It was:
26:48
OMG I jumped up and down and high fived myself. I was SO excited. This is a good 2 mins better than my previous PB.
Turns out I LOVE group runs. And the reason I was finding the run so hard was that I was pushing myself to keep up with the crowd, to go that bit faster, to give it all I had.
Aaahhhhh so that’s what that feels like eh?
Fucking loved it. It was brilliant. I felt brilliant. I felt like the Road Runner. And now I’m hooked.
Hope you had a great weekend folks.
Beep beep!
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