More bone cracking, an early morning run and a race

Looking back at it, this has been a week full of things to talk about!


Monday, the day after my 24km run, I had another session of bone cracking which left me sore and with a bruised back. Ouch. 


Wednesday, 5km jog, nothing to report.


I was supposed to run 8km on Thursday but I had to move it to Friday and I also had to go out very early in the morning in order to be back by the time my husband had to go to work. It was very nice to be out so early, and watch the sun come up.

When I got home I found out that my daughter (who had had a fever the previous day) was now full of tiny red spots, later identified as chickenpox by the doctor. I thought this would automatically rule out the 10K race today, but luckily she reacted well and has only been suffering from the itching, so we all went to the race. I had no idea how many people would participate, I was expecting about a thousand runners but it turned out to be a much smaller event. There were various distances (2,5km, 5km, 10km, 15km, plus 500m and 1000m for kids), and the participants in the 10K were only 199. The speaker was very excited to see in the list "some very exotic names" he wouldn't dare to pronounce... and he was most likely talking about me. 

The weather was crazy, just like it's been for the past two weeks. One moment the sun is out and it's nice and warm (though still talking about just 9℃), then the sun goes into hiding behind the clouds with the wind blowing hard and you wish you had a winter coat on. You can imagine how unhappy all of us runners were when all lined up and ready to start we heard that we still had to wait another full 5 minutes... there was a general moan of disapproval.

My plan was to just enjoy the race, start easy, see what happened and maybe try to break the hour but without forcing it anyway. 

The course was full of ups and downs on muddy hills, we've had very strong wind for most of the time and even some heavy rain... not the ideal conditions I would say! It was clear from the beginning that breaking the hour was going to be difficult, so I completely put that aside and I just focused on enjoying the race and trying to stay strong, in which I succeeded. 

Just before it poured

We were cutting the hills back and forth, so the winding lines of runners created a nice effect with their coloured t-shirts as little bright spots in the green and brown countryside. 

This picture only gives a faint idea of what it was like (and you must see it full size even for that), as there are only very few runners in just one line. I was out for the race after all, not for a photoshoot! I have to say though that I am getting better at snapping pictures while just slowing down to a jog :-)


Around the 6km mark I decided to speed up a bit and I progressively increased my pace all the way up to the finish line, which I crossed in 1:00:39 (Garmin time). All in all I am very satisfied with this result, I was able to tackle the hills, navigate through the mud and face the wind without being knocked out. My picture may even end up on the event's website because I noticed a photographer and waved at him with a smile, and he followed me snapping away for a couple of meters. I couldn't help but keep smiling also in the final 500m, which were lined up with cheering spectators and a very loud band. If this was so nice, what will it be like to run the final 400m of a marathon in an Olympic stadium in front of thousands of people?