Tag: 10k

The Bedford Half Twilight 10k – My Review

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I’m sure I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I absolutely hate 10k as a distance. I find them so difficult to pace, often blowing up at around 6 or 7k, and as such I’ve avoided them like the plague in the last couple of years. But then I decided that this was the year to (occasionally) go out of my comfort zone, so I’ve so far done the Ely Runners 10k handicap race, and the Marcus Gynn 10k (which was surprisingly held on the surface of the sun). And then this weekend it was the turn of the Bedford Half Marathon Weekend‘s Twilight 10k.

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I’ll be honest – it was the photo of the medal that first convinced me to sign up for this race. It was obnoxiously huge and shiny, which appealed massively to my inner magpie. I keep all of my medals and am always pretty disappointed whenever I do a race and find my goodie bag only has a couple of flyers and a revolting gel in it. Plus one of my favourite running buddies was going along, and we decided (ok, I basically told him) that we would run it together.

When Chris, Sarah, Justin and I arrived at the running village after a bit of a schlep from the car (parking was a good mile and a half away but I didn’t mind this too much) the atmosphere was just brilliant. They had a massive welcome sign (perfect for a group photo!) a big stage with a DJ, lots of food stalls and a variety of pop up stalls including Up & Running and a local sports physio company offering massages (so I was a tad disappointed not to have any cash on me)! On Running were also there, and I visited them after I had finished the race only to find that I could have borrowed a pair of their Cloudflyers (which I’ve had my eye on for some time) to run the race in. I did do a little sprint in them (and they felt AMAZING) but it would have been great to trial an entire 10k in them, especially as they’re quite an investment pair of trainers. The event also had lots of hay bales dotted around for people to sit on, and most happily of all there were LOADS of toilets which made this nervous runner feel a bit calmer.

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Me, Justin, Sarah, Chris, Shaun and Emma – thanks to Chris and Sarah for the lift!

The start of the race was probably the only negative part of the whole thing (other than Emma and I not being able to locate halloumi fries). They had split the (potentially 3000 runners, but only 1846 completed the race) into 5 waves, and Justin and I were in Wave 1 which was due to start at 5:30. So we got there at around 5:25 only to find they had already sent Wave 1 to the start. Cue a mad dash with little or no direction to find our way to the start which ended up being where we had just come from! I think in future they should just start Wave 1 at the actual start and have the other 4 waves in the holding area. But still, at this point I got to meet the awesome Laura Brine who I’ve been following on Twitter for some time (but only realised it was her when searching for the race hashtag on Instagram on the way home!) as we all pegged it to the start.

The start of the race was a little congested, and at first I thought maybe the organisers had got their wave splits completely wrong. But as it turned out, they had it pretty spot on. The largest group was those who had put their finish time as 1:00 – 1:09 (553 finishers), and our group (sub 54 minutes) had 379 people finish in that time. Of course I can’t tell how many people may have started in the first wave but finished slower than they had expected, but overall the splits seemed fairly sensible. You just have to be like Justin and be willing to scuttle past people and overtake them when the opportunity presents itself, and after the first kilometre or so this becomes easier.

Bedford 10k Finish

Chris, Kojak/Justin and I

The course was gorgeous – there was woodland, lakes, bridges, the riverside – there was so much to look at which I found brilliantly distracting. Plus the course offered a variety of surfaces and the odd little incline which stopped my legs from getting too “bored”. The marshals were also brilliant, and I just thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. They also had a great goody bag – the medal of epicness, a technical t-shirt that doesn’t completely swamp me and snacks like bananas and biscuits. All of this for a race entry fee of around £25 for both the 10k and the half marathon which takes place on the Sunday.

I honestly don’t think I could recommend this race enough. I enjoyed it so much that I had already signed up for next year less than 24 hours later. I’m even contemplating making like Laura and signing up for both the 10k and the half in 2019, but I’ll see how my foot holds up to the St Neots half marathon later this year. So what are you waiting for? Get signed up for 2019 here – you won’t regret it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How I’m Coping with the Heat – A Runner’s Guide

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Spoiler alert – that was a proper click-baity title. Because I’m not coping with the heat. At all. I am one of those British people who moans constantly as soon as it gets above 20 degrees. I need to move to Shetland.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a winter girl through and through. As well as being a Christmas monkey (yes I will share Elf memes from around September until you mute me), I love the feeling of icy air in my lungs when I run, not this hideous soup-like substance I’m having to breathe through every time I step outside. I’m the girl who went out when it was so cold that her eyelashes froze together, and when she warmed up resembled Alice Cooper as her mascara ran down her face. Plus I am incredibly fair. My version of a tan is looking ever so slightly less blue in the summer. I am losing hours of my life to applying factor 50 every day, and am sweating from my knees for crying out loud. And don’t even get me started on just how terrifyingly red my face is capable of going.

HOWEVER. I am still managing to run and there are a few tiny things that I am doing that are making life that little bit more bearable. For me at least. Sorry for my husband/officemate/friends/fellow train users/everyone I come to contact with who is having to deal with the worst version of me right now.

FIND A WHINGE BUDDY

When you find a fellow hater of heat it is a glorious thing. Take for example my running buddy Serena (check out her awesome blog here). We spent a lovely time on Saturday morning discussing the futility vs necessity of showering in this weather (shower, get sweaty dressing, repeat until the four horseman of the apocalypse turn up and ask if that thing they can smell is you) and how much we miss running in the cold. We knew we could offload on to each other without risk of a judgey eyeroll and someone saying “what do you mean? It’s lovely out there!”. Try telling that to the grass you lizard-human hybrid.

ARM  YOURSELF

Due to my dependence on our often lacklustre summers, I had (somewhat accidentally) found myself with 5 races in the calendar within 19 days during this heatwave (at time of writing I’m 3 down, 2 to go).  This has meant that I’ve had to arm myself mentally and physically for these challenges. Physically, my water intake has gone up, especially in advance of a race. I sweat A LOT in these conditions so I have to make sure I’m well hydrated. During my 10k last weekend I stopped at both water stations to properly drink and pour some water on my head. I’ve also dug out my O.R.S Electroylte Hydration Tablets, something I’ve only ever used during half marathon training before. In addition to this, I’ve been stocking up on Ronhill Visors from my local independent sports shop. These are super lightweight and have been an absolute game changer in this heat. If there are none left in Ely you know who to blame.

Mentally, I’m trying to make sure I back off slightly in races. This isn’t easy when you’re competitive, even less so when you’re racing against people with a much better tolerance of the high temperatures, but it’s an absolutely necessity. People have been collapsing on runs in this weather, and I don’t intend on being one of them. I’m finding that I’m coming in around 2 minutes over best race pace on a 10k, and around 40 odd seconds on a 5k. I can deal with that, mainly by reminding myself that this is excellent training for winter.

NAP LIKE A CHAMP

I’m usually a pretty sound sleeper. I can drop off quite easily, and generally if I wake up in the night I don’t tend to remember it. But in this weather I can find myself taking at least 30 minutes to drop off in my bedroom, which has been sitting at around the 26 degree mark since this heatwave hit. So I’m grabbing power naps when I can in an attempt to simply top up my energy levels which have really dipped over the last couple of weeks. I’m also a big fan of the Mama Mio Liquid Yoga Spray, which I use on my pillow to help me to try and relax.

ICE LOLLIES, CONSTANTLY

I’ve recently discovered Rowntree’s Watermelon Ice Lollies and the thing I never thought would happen has happened. They have knocked Twisters off their decades long spot as my favourite ice lolly. Get yourself down to your local supermarket and thank me later.

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Accepting the PB Plateau

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Last year was a bit of a PB year for me. I got my 5k PB at the final Kevin Henry League race in September when I ran a 20:19. I then achieved my current 10k PB of 42:41 at the Cambridge Town and Gown event in October. I also got my default Sprint Tri PB of 1:17:44 (but since this was my first ever sprint tri it only kind of counts. Essentially it’s both my best and worst time….).

In both the 5k and 10k races,  I found myself experiencing what I would call ideal runs. Perfect conditions in regards to weather and terrain, and physically I felt GOOD. I also found fantastic people to pace me (whether they realised it or not) – Mary in the 5k and Pete in the 10k (up to about the 6k mark anyway). Seriously though, if you’d told me when I first started running 6 years ago that I would achieve a 20:19 5k I would have died laughing like those hyenas from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”.

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But there comes a time when PBs become harder and harder to come by. When you reach a certain level in your running abilities, things start to plateau a bit, and you have to start looking at more than just your running if you want to get better.

Training with Alan and working on my strength and conditioning has seen me go from a 24 minute 5k to an average of around 21 (my last two races were 20:48 and 21:17). This is more than I could have hoped for, and it’s shown me how there’s so much more to being a good runner than just pounding the pavements.But when you’ve found yourself a measly 20 seconds away from a sub 20 minute 5k, you do find yourself wondering “what if……….?”.

I’ve come to accept that not every race is going to be a PB race. I understand that. So instead I’ve been looking at what I can learn from every race that I do. I try and take away the positives, such as the fact that I didn’t panic when my mouth turned to dust and I wanted nothing more than  a drink of water, or the fact that I managed a sprint finish in my last race which saw me take out the girl who had overtaken me in the last 800 metres.

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And in addition to the positives, I’m also trying to take what I’ve learned and use it to see what I can do better. And for me this is always – always – about controlling that stupid voice in my head that says “you, a runner? Seriously? That girl over there – she’s a runner. You’re nothing but a fake. Go home before you make a fool of yourself.” And while that bee-yatch is wanging on, I’m also constantly thinking about how I want to make myself proud. Alan, my club mates, everyone who reads this blog even – I want to do my best.

There’s nothing wrong with having passion. On the whole it’s a really, really good thing. But when you’re at risk of becoming known as your club crier, you really need to get things in check and make an effort to start working on your mental strength. So I’m finally going to read The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters (I bought it a year ago FFS) and try not to put so much pressure on myself. Without being all mega cheesy FITSPO about it, one of my favourite quotes is “Don’t look at how far you’ve got to go, look at how far you’ve come.” I’ve come such a long way in my 6 years of running, but I’d like to go a little further please. Let’s see if 2016 has any PBs up its sleeve. But if it doesn’t that’s ok.

Fitspo Nonsense

Word.

 

 

 

Coming Back from Christmas

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It’s the last day of my Christmas leave today, and I’m wondering how my body is going to react to that first early (for me anyway) alarm and that 50 minute cycle-train-cycle commute into work tomorrow morning. I’ve become way too comfortable with lying in until 10am. But luckily, I did my utmost to stay active over the Christmas break, because really it’s just a natural way for me to be.

Recently, my other half and I have started playing badminton together. At first I was super cocky, convinced that my weekly session with my office bestie meant that I was the superior opponent. Oh how wrong I was. It turns out that the OH coached badminton to beginners as part of his Duke of Edinburgh award. Brilliant. Now my competitive side does not enjoy losing. It enjoys being thrashed even less. But this is what is happening to me repeatedly every time we play. My best score has been 9-15, and the worst 0-15. On average I manage 4 or 5. Mortifying. But with the extra sessions we enjoyed over our fortnight break, I’m making the OH work a little harder for his wins if nothing else.

The other thing I kept up with over the break was (surprise, surprise) running. On the 20th December I took part in the annual Ely Runners Christmas Run for the first time (wearing one of my Sweaty Betty sale bargains!). Unfortunately my work Christmas party was the night before so – um – dehydration was always likely to be an issue. And although I found it tough, I really enjoyed it. Pete and I, being complete newbies, found ourselves at the back of the group, and as the first couple of miles are single file your position is pretty much set from the get go. The terrain is muddy and undulating with a fair few short, sharp inclines (and the inevitable declines) but being out in the quiet countryside with just the odd dog walker to give you a tip of the hat was awesome. After the first mile or so Pete and I were mostly on our own, but we kept each other going (he had to work harder than me on that count) and after the first 7.5 miles we debated whether or not to do the next 5, but in the end we stuck to our original plan and got the coach back to Ely with the promise that we’d do the longer distance next year. Who knows – maybe we’ll even be convinced to do the full 18.5! If that happens I think I’ll be the designated driver at the 2016 work Christmas party.

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On the coach home

On Christmas Day itself I went for a quick little 5k around Ely. Now I know that doing this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and I totally get it. But the OH and I always spend Christmas Day just the two of us, and Boxing Day is usually our day for seeing family. So I like nothing more than just doing a really quick run around my lovely quiet city on the big day, and seeing all the houses lit up and full of people just enjoying being with their families. Yes I’m nosey. What of it?!

And finally on New Year’s Eve it was time for the Ely Runners’ NYE 10k. I last ran this in 2013, where I finished in a time of 48:38 (you can read all about it my friend James’ great blog here). I found it pretty tough mainly due to the fact it’s so flipping exposed. It’s just a loop around the Fens so as you can imagine there is no hiding from the wind. So I was pretty nervous last Thursday, which was not helped by a terrible night’s sleep thanks to a health issue I’m currently trying to get a handle on (I won’t bore you with it here – it’s frustrating rather than serious and just proving tricky to get to the bottom of).

NYH - The Team

NYE 10k Team 2013

Luckily I had my friends to calm me down (mostly through laughing at me with a bit of reassurance thrown in), and after a final pee stop (yes I’m a nervous runner) we set off.

To  be honest, I found it tough. Really tough. I set off too fast and after that I lost count of the times I wanted to stop and walk from the 2k point onwards. At one point I nearly burst into tears. I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep, the nerves, the cold, the wind, or the fact that the runners became so spread out that I was on my own for nearly all of it. It was probably a combination of all of those things. But the thing that kept me going was the brilliant support of all of the Ely Runner marshals. Quite simply, I didn’t want to let them down by stopping. So I battled on, and I finally finished in a time of 44:38, exactly 4 minutes off my time from 2 years ago but nearly 2 minutes off my PB.

At first I was pretty emotional. I don’t like it when a run is that hard. It’s not so much the time I finished in (although I was a bit disappointed with it), just how difficult it was to get there. But then I got a bit of perspective. I had done a tough interval session with Ely Runners on the Tuesday, I’d had a terrible night’s sleep, and I’d run a 10k without a water bottle for the first time (a big deal for me). And 2015 has been an incredible year for my running, so how can I really be disappointed?  Yes it’s always nice to end things on a high, but there are always going to be tough runs. You can’t control everything when it comes to running. It’s just the nature of the beast. I just need to try and learn from the experience and come back stronger. And the celebratory glass of wine I had afterwards certainly helped with the more positive attitude.

NYE 10k Team 2015

Part of NYE 10k Team 2015  

So my Christmas break was pretty busy, and I was constantly inspired to stay active by those around me – Pete and Rach who played doubles badminton with us (I don’t think Rach and I will be a team any time soon), Lucy who ran her first ever 10k in an astonishing time of 52:06, and my friend Emma who completed the advent run streak, covering 66k in 24 days and who is now a fully paid up member of the running bug club. It’s hard to sit on your backside when all that is going on around you.

I’m not sure any of it is going to help with that alarm clock tomorrow though.

MDUK’s 2015 Cambridge Town and Gown 10k – My Review

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Recently I’ve really been enjoying running 5ks. I think this is down to a mixture of knowing that I can beast myself but that it’ll all be over in around 21 minutes, and also the fact that I’ve been collecting PB after PB over this distance. That’s always good for a positive mindset.

But I know Alan wants me to do longer distances (secretly I think he wants me to do a marathon but I’m avoiding having that conversation wherever possible), so back on the 22nd June I signed up for Muscular Dystrophy UK‘s Cambridge Town and Gown 10k, which – if I went ahead with it – would make it the third time in a row that I had done this race.

Anyone who reads my blog with any regularity will know that my last 10k was a bit of a bust. I had a pretty nasty cold and so it was a stop and start affair that made me wang on about how much I HATED the 10k distance for a good few weeks afterwards. But an awful lot of my recent interval training with Ely Runners has been around the 10k mark, and Pete and I went on a 5.4 mile training run a couple of weeks ago which went really well. This all meant that I was actually feeling ok about the Town and Gown. Don’t get me wrong – the pre-race nerves were still fully present, but for once I didn’t have that anxiety dream about forgetting my race number that I pretty much always get. Plus Pete is always adamant that pre-race nerves are a good thing, and since he’s a speedy blighter I feel obliged to trust him on that one. I think my biggest concern was the fact that I’d be running it on my own, which is funny when I think about how I had always considered myself a lone runner until this year. Now I always have someone like Andy or Rich to run with at Ely Runners, and the last couple of big races I’ve done I’ve run with Elaine at her pace. I can’t keep up with Pete over such a long distance, so I knew I’d have to dig deep to push myself through this one on my own.

After some pretty shocking weather on Saturday, we were lucky to wake up to a cold but dry and bright Sunday morning, with the car thermometer putting the outside temperature at a brisk 5 degrees (making me doubt my choice of shorts over leggings). Ian and I picked up Pete and his wife Rach and the four of us headed into Cambridge to make sure Pete was there to pick up his race number before the registration cut off of 9:30am ready for the start of the race at 10am. While Pete and Rach headed to Midsummer Common I got to hang out with my sister, her partner Simon and my nephew Danny and niece Eloise for 40 minutes or so. The bonus of having a sister who lives near to the start of so many of the big races in Cambridge (and the provision of a non-Portaloo pit stop!) cannot be underestimated.

At about 9:20 I jogged to the start and caught up with Pete and Rach and after jogging around a bit more I finally plucked up the courage to give Rach my nice, warm Sweaty Betty top, before heading to the start line to begin the race with Pete.

I had absolutely zero intention of staying with Pete for anything longer than about 60 seconds, but by some miracle I stayed with him until around the 2k mark. We had blasted out the first mile in something ridiculous like 6:20, and when he peeled away by about 10 metres as we turned off Queen’s Road onto Silver Street I decided not to try and keep up with him. I know my limits pretty well, and I think if I’d tried to carry on matching him completing the 10k would have been difficult. But thanks to him I had gotten off to a cracking start.

Town and Gown 10k 2015Waving to Andrew at around the 3k mark.

I had already checked where the water stations were on the route, so I hadn’t taken my water bottle with me on the first 5k. But when I saw that they were handing out cups rather than small bottles or pouches I made the decision to grab my running bottle (I got a telling off for that later) from where I’d tucked it out of sight on the route. The thing is, sometimes I can’t drink a cup of tea on the sofa without choking on it, so trying to gulp from a cup of water mid run was not going to end well.

The second part of the 10k took us away from the city and out along the river, which is a lot quieter in terms of support but it’s flat and fast. The main issue is that it doubles back on itself, so the super fast runners come past you on their last 2k or so while you’re still fighting at the 6-7k mark. However, it was at this point that I saw Liz Fraser, a previous winner of the race, and I worked out that she could only have been a couple of minutes ahead of me. Naturally I assumed this meant that she was just having a bad race as opposed to my having a good one.

Unfortunately I started to get a stitch just before 8k, but luckily I got a handle on it fairly quickly, forcing my breathing to become more regular as it had become a bit erratic as I started to get tired. The final kilometre and a half was nothing short of agonising, but I kept trying to tell myself that it was only 4 more times around the track, just three more times around the track, chipping away the metres in my mind and telling myself “you got this, you got this.” When Alan appeared near the end and said to me “Come on, sprint finish! Kick! KICK”! I gave those last couple of hundred metres EVERYTHING I had. I can’t even begin to explain how agonising it was to find out that the big flags I had seen didn’t actually mark the finish line and that I actually had another 20+ metres to stagger to the end. After tweeting the organisers about this they explained it was a mix up with Sussex Sports Photography – the flags were theirs but as a runner in the final throes of a 10k you assume that any flags in the final few metres are the finish line. After having a great chat with Annie from MDUK on the phone earlier (how awesome that she took the time to do that?) she told me they’d make sure that any flags by any of their supporters wouldn’t be put in that position again.

When I crossed the (real) finish line and saw Pete looking at me slightly agog I knew I had achieved a decent time. I never in a million years imagined that a time like that was something I could do though. I didn’t dare believe it until I saw my speedy text with my official time. For the number crunchers amongst you, here’s a breakdown of the previous three Town and Gowns. The route changed for the better in 2014 – clearly cow dodging in 2013 was seriously slowing people down! – and that was also the year I ran it with Elaine who was storming her first ever 10k:

Year No. Runners Winning Male Winning Female My Time Time Behind My Overall Position No. Female Runners My Gender Position Gender Position % Pace Per Mile
2013 560 36:01 39:50 49:59 10:09 137 256 21 Top 8.2% 08:03
2014 778 33:42 37:30 50:53 13:23 287 329 47 Top 14.3% 08:11
2015 1279 32:25 36:56 42:40 5:44 144 619 16 Top 2.6% 06:52

So as you can see my improvement over the last couple of years has been a bit nuts, and this is in no small part thanks to Alan. But back to that rollocking he gave me. His words after I finished were “Well done, but if I ever see you running with a water bottle again…..” My reasons for doing so fell on deaf ears but this is something we need to work towards together. This is only the 2nd 10k I’ve run since he started coaching me, and I planned to run without it until I saw the water station. I need to build towards this, and I am someone who sweats a lot so I need to be able to take on some fluid on longer races. He said we’d chat about it when we next train, but since that’s going to be at Wandlebury – and we all know what happened last time I was there – perhaps we’d be better off leaving that chat until next week.

Regarding the actual race itself, I think it’s an utterly brilliant 10k and would recommend it to everyone. It’s without doubt my favourite 10k in my racing calendar (sorry NYE 10k – those exposed fens are just evil). It’s a serious PB course especially when the conditions are as perfect as they were yesterday – everyone I know who ran it got a PB – and the support in the city is brilliant. It’s really scenic too, and almost completely flat (although the little incline at about 8.5k is a sod). I would say they could do with more toilets as they don’t seemed to have increased the number despite having around 500 more participants this year, and the medals were a real step down from previous years (I personally don’t mind too much when it’s a brilliant race for charity, but I think it’s worth mentioning). And as for that Cool Dawn Recovery drink that came in the goodie bag – revolting doesn’t cover it.

wpid-img_20151026_221808.jpgIf you enjoyed reading this blog, please send a pound or two to the brilliant charity who turned Cambridge orange for a day. You can do so here.