And I don't mean that in a particularly good way. Ok, let's examine the history to this one- I've run this 10k for the last 4 years. I run as part of the Scoliosis Campaign Fund team. I run this for my daughter, Scarlett, who has scoliosis and has, as many of you know, had two major operations to correct it. She's doing brilliantly and is a very active young lady. I can't wait for the day she will run this one with me! :)
Anyway, so I've done this a few times and it's always a bit crowded and you have to do a bit of weaving at the start to get into a pace and amongst similar strength runners...that's all fine. BUT this year the whole course was a really assault course. I was hoping to pull my time in under the hour- I'd done some good training times and was feeling strong for this one. Had a fabulous day with Helen in London the day before; met up with Aggi and Andy (congratulations btw) for dinner at Jamie's Italian and so all was well with the world. 0830 on race day, met up with the SCF Team and Nicola and Carrie-Ann- friends who were also running and headed off to the start line near Marble Arch. 0935 is when we were due to start but for some reason this was delayed by a good 20 mins, with us crossing the start line 40 mins later. Yes, it was that busy. And then for the dodgems. Now the roads down that London are pretty wide and still it was heaving- way more so than previous years. The pic below is at the 2k mark (thanks Helen and Dale for cheering me on) and it looks pretty relaxed on that. Don't you believe it! With runners of all strengths and sizes it was really hard work. I'm sure I read somewhere there were 26,000 runners and for once it felt like they were all slower and in front of me!
The other thing to dodge as well was the amount of water bottles scattered on the road- with 3 water stations (a bit OTT for a 10k) there were 1000's of bottles everywhere. Luckily there were no Gatorade bottles scattered this year. Usually at 5k you get some of this stuff and the floor gets that sticky, it's like running on velcro! I'm telling you, it takes quite a bit of concentration dodging all this stuff!
I felt good throughout the run and with Westminster and Big Ben in sight, I knew I was nearly home. As I chugged past Parliament Aggi and Andy were there to cheer and high 5 me- just what I needed- brilliant and at the last 500m and finally a stretch of road with room to manoeuvre, I sprinted for the finish line crossing at 1hour and 1 minute exactly. Pretty gutted at that time as I'm sure I could have come in 4 mins quicker. To be honest I think I might have run a 10.5k race with all the snaking between people!
Anyway, great day, great race, great friends and of for lunch and a good natter and debrief about the day's events at the Soho Pizzeria before catching the train home. It's become a tradition to come home first class (thank you Tesco for the clubcard tickets) with free wi-fi, tea and butties but more importantly, comfy chairs and room to spread with my aching ankles!
Carrie-Ann is trying to persuade me to do a marathon (in best cockney/essex accent "if you can do a 10k you can do an arf...if you can do an arf you can do a marafon!")- wise words indeed but I'm not convinced!
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