Race report

Hi everyone,

I realise I've rather neglected this blog, sorry about that. There's a good reason for it though - I started a new job, bizarrely back at Lehman Brothers, but now working for the Administrators. I won't go into details as it's all boring accountant stuff.

So here I am, two days from my second race and I haven't even reported on the first race! Obviously, I finished, but importantly did way better than I expected. My original goal when I started training was simply to finish - I'd never run that far in my life, so just getting over the line was an acheivement.

As the big day approached, thanks largely to being pushed by my training partner Iain Clark (more on him later) I realised that I could hope to do considerably better than just finishing. Iain encouraged me to do 10K training runs much earlier in my training schedule than I'd planned, and by the time the race rolled round I realised the challenge was to crack one hour. That meant running at a average pace under 10 minutes per mile, something that I really struggled to do. In my best training run I managed the 10K in one hour and 2 minutes, and felt like death.

On the day the excitement of the event carried me through and I finished in 55 minutes 55 seconds, prodly running in my royal blue Catholic Association polo shirt! For that stunning success I have to thank Iain again, my pace-setter, even though he unsportingly sped off in the last 500 m to finish 11 seconds ahead of me. I also have to thank JoJo for ferrying me to and from the race, bullying me to train, and generally being supportive and wonderful.

After the race I was exhausted, but still capable of moving about and talking, which was a bonus. I also got a shiny medal (see my facebook profile picture) and a bag of sports drinks. The atmosphere was great, the organisation of the race only marred by some delays in getting the timing chips read and results uploaded to the website. The whole thing was organised by 2:09 Events, and was really enjoyable. Race report and official results are here: http://www.209events.com/event.php?event=90

I left the Brooklands venue incredibly pleased with myself and the result, but also knowing that I had to stay ambitious. I now knew that six 10Ks wasn't enough of a challenge. But where to go from here? That's the subject of my next post.

In the meantime, please go and donate lots of money on my website:
https://www.bmycharity.com/V2/60kmtoLourdes
I'm over £350 including offline donations, but I'd really like to get over the £500 mark!