Greetings lovely running friends and cheerleaders!
Yesterday was the day I chose to celebrate a year since I started running. I'm not quite sure when I started as I paid little attention to the date, as a) I was mentally in a pretty bad place at the time and b) I never thought I'd get past week one of C25K! Still, here I am, a year later. If you want to read more about my story, and I know many of you will have seen this already, but I posted on Couch to 5K here: healthunlocked.com/couchto5...
Today, then, I had my usual day off work. The weather was cool but beautiful, so I decided today was the day I was going to break the 10k barrier. Now often when I do these things, I give myself a get-out, with a disclaimer such as "*if I feel OK to continue". Not today. I was GOING to run my planned route. The only allowences I made were that I would stop to take the odd picture, but literally only slow down, take a picture, continue. For those of you who have been keeping up with my 10k running route, there is a really nasty stretch which is a nasty climb up from the Middlewood Way (closed railway line) up to the Macclesfield Canal. I decided to continue along the Middlewood Way for another mile or so, as it eventually climbs gradually to meet the canal anyway, so that's what I did.
I set off using a slightly slower track than usual from PodRunner, but it was one I was using whilst going through Bridge to 10k, "Road to Joy", claiming to be based on the music of Bach and Beethoven. In actual fact it was the usual mess of boppy music with the added bonus of hearing a Bach prelude and Beethoven's 9th crucified, but hey it's helpful to me The slower tempo certainly helped me control my pace, and that didn't make a huge difference to my final average pace, which surprised me.
One thing I particularly enjoyed was passing other runners coming the other way. I felt like I was finally worthy to say "hi" to them, and that I could hold my head high because I am also a runner now. Me, a runner!
I have to say I did hit a bit of a wall at 10k, but that was largely because the road which leads up to the canal from the middlewood way has a bit of a sting in it's tail in terms of gradient, but by that point I'd leveled off, so I naturally recovered.
Before I knew it, I'd passed 12k. I finished my run at the point I started, 12.73k in total. I really really tried to get my pace below 7min/km, but ended up at 7:01. Never mind - I'm very happy with that pace for what is by far my longest run ever. That's nearly 8 miles. If you'd told me a year ago I'd be able to run nearly 8 miles I'd have laughed at you.
Once again - thank you everyone for your wonderful support, especially my dear running buddy Sadie-runs who has stuck by me throughout this journey, putting up with my rollercoaster of emotions, various injuries, and just generally being a rock, albeit a speedy rock. That's it Sadie, YOU rock
See you all soon, happy and safe running!
Neil