Monday 21 April 2014

Running Naked

A month or so before my marathon I had entered Trowse 10K, a race that was on Easter Sunday. It was my friend Michaela's favourite race and apparently gave out the best goodie bags as well as having a medal. With little regard to whether my legs might be up to running again,or whether I would want to be up at 6am on Easter Sunday, I signed up.

I didn't prepare very well for the race. On top of the whole marathon a fortnight before, I did parkrun the morning before and then 2 hours of hot TRX and barre the afternoon before. This meant that my legs were sore and tired before I'd even started. As a vague nod towards proper preparation I did eat the traditional spaghetti bolognese the evening before, but couldn't face getting up early enough to have porridge so just had toast. Can you tell that I wasn't really that fussed about this race?!

I didn't bother to charge my Garmin and decided I would just run naked (without a watch) by feel. I was a bit worried that that might result me settling into the familiar marathon pace so set off quite fast. I regretted that by 3K when we faced a long hill and I started to feel a bit sick and had a few black spots before my eyes! Maybe my attitude towards the 10K (it's only 6 miles, I've done 26...) was a bit blasé. The sensible runner would have slowed down at this point but my competitive instinct kicked in and refused to- luckily the hill did eventually end and what went up did have to go down so I was able to recover on the downhill. It was two laps and after the first lap I shouted to Neil that I'd gone off too fast but I still didn't really know what pace I was running. I'm almost certain I slowed a bit in the second half but I had got used to running by then so was feeling, not exactly good, but a bit less sick. At 9K I think I slacked off a bit and decided just to ease in to the finish - my legs felt heavy and my arms were also aching; my body was just understandably tired. However just before the turn to the finish Neil shouted at me that I could get under 52 minutes...what?! Apparently I did have a sprint finish in me after all and legged it to the line for a new PB of 51.37 - almost a minute quicker than my previous PB. Running naked had worked for me this time but I'm not sure whether to risk it at my next 10K in a couple of weeks time. Either way, Project #summerofspeed is off to a good start!
(A comedy race number always helps) 

1 comment:

  1. Woo woo!!! PB alert!!! (Rings PB bell!!) Well done!!

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