10K Race!

I did it! Yesterday, 3rd June was the Christchurch Marathon. There were a number of events, a marathon, a half marathon a 10K and some kids races.

I ran the 10K.

Here is the story.

The night before, it is traditional to have a high carb meal, so I did...my style! We had beef burgers. These were homemade of course and consisted of ground beef, 2 eggs, grated carrot, half a chopped onion, a few peas and a tablespoon of LSA (Linseed, sesame and almond) flour. So Paleo, but not low carb.

The morning of the race I just had 2 cups of tea with cream, I didn't eat breakfast, as I normally run fasted. When we reached the race it was amazing, like a small village with marques, tents, food vendors, running gear shops, PA systems and so on. There were 4 and a half thousand runners, not counting the kids.

I was aiming to get in under 2 hours, a walkers time I know, but I run slower than many people can walk! I had done the 5K in 43 minutes so one should say aim for an hour and a half, but of course with the longer distance I thought aiming for that was unrealistic. I had only run 10k once in training, and had taken over 2 hours, including stopping twice to empty sand out of my shoes!

So I was aiming for around 2 hours. I stationed myself at the back of the pack amongst the walkers. This mean it took me almost 5 minutes to shuffle off towards the start! But as we all had individual timing chips on our shoes that didn't matter.

Eventually we got running and after the adrenaline stopped making me breathless, I settled into my usual slow, can-run-for-ever, pace. I had decided to alternate walking and running, and took my first walk break after about 20 minutes. The idea was to walk for a minute or two and then jog again.

This worked fine, and I began to enjoy myself. At the 5k mark there was a pipe band playing Scotland the Brave and people handing out water and Powerade. I went for the water of course, and trotted on. People were very cheerful and friendly and I chatted to many of them. After an hour people began passing us in the opposite direction, coming in from the half marathon, and us slower people had to be careful to keep out of their way.

The run was really good fun most of the way, but towards the end I began to feel very tired. A body check showed up the bad news my left foot was now flapping, and this had resulted in a pain in my right hip as my right leg tried to compensate. This was not unexpected, and as the pain was hardly acute, I decided to carry on.

For new readers...I had an accident 7 years ago that resulted in a back operation. At one point they thought I would lose most of the use of my left leg, and for a while afterwards I needed to walk with sticks. Things got better slowly and now I only limp if I am tired, but when I do get tired my left foot starts to flap and slap the ground. Running has been very good for strengthening my weak leg.

Back to the story. I was now on a short section of main road and had only to turn up by Raewards (a fruit and veg shop) and then about half a kilometer along the airport road and I was done. However I was very tired and thought I would walk a bit and then run down the finish shoot. However as soon as I slowed walk, a passing runner, a young man running the half marathon, called out encouragement as he passed. So I gritted my teeth and jogged on. As I came around the corner I could see the finish ahead and dug deep. I ran as fast as I could along the final stretch of road. It was weird I felt as if I was putting enormous effort into it, yet I seemed to be going slower and slower!

Finally I crossed the finish, stopped running and promptly had the shakes! An official sat me down and brought water, which I drank, and then brought Powerade, and insisted I had some before I could go. So I drank 2 swallows of the disgusting stuff. I said I felt better, and managed to escape to where hubby was waiting. Then I had boiled eggs dipped in salt and raw nuts. I soon felt much better.

And my time? 1 hour 29 minutes!!