Very happy to say that I did my first 10k run today! We had a homework day from my swedish class (because yesterday was a bank holiday and when it falls on a Thursday most swedes take the Friday off as a 'klämdag' (squeeze day). So I could make my own schedule and set out at a leisurely time to attempt the big 10k. My boyfriend lent me his shiny new Garmin so that I could get an accurate distance as the gps on my phone is pretty unreliable and I wanted to know when I had definitely done it!
I decided to do roughly the route of the 10k race which I've signed up for on the 15th of June. The route map on the website is pretty vague and full of little pictures of landmarks which get in the way of the actual route (not helpful!) but I had plotted out what I thought looked about right in advance using endomondo. It includes a couple of parks that I run in regularly as well as part of the local parkrun route so it all feels nice and familiar!
Everything went pretty smoothly until about 6 km when I had to do a loop which went right through the middle of the busiest/most touristy part of town. It was getting on for lunchtime so I had to do a lot of speeding up and manoeuvring to get around the pedestrians! That km ended up being a good 35 - 50 secs faster than all the other kms and I could definitely feel it! First time running on cobbles too (occupational hazard of taking a route through the old town which is full of pretty squares and quaint little side streets).
I was feeling pretty knackered at 7k so I decided to have a couple of bites of a cereal bar I had brought with me. I've only just started to experiment with fuelling on longer runs so I'm playing about with whats suits me. This was not a good fit! I felt instantly much thirstier and struggled with that for the next couple of km until I could detour to pass a water fountain and gulp in a few blissful mouthfuls! I'm going to try to find something less dry (more in the style of a nak'd bar) to see if that works better for me.
The last km seemed to pass achingly slowly. That was when I started to find the watch a bit distracting - very easy to keep looking at it when you desperately want to be finished! But I made it in the end and I'm really happy with my time as I am aiming for anything under 1hr 20 on race day. I am a bit concerned about how thirsty I felt as it wasn't even very sunny (although it felt quite muggy and I could definitely sense the pollen in the air!) I can't seem to find a water bottle that I think I could carry comfortably so I may have to rely on the 5km hydration point on the day - just crossing my fingers it isn't too sunny!
Thanks for the support and inspiration all, which has definitely kept me going to get this far!
week3run1 ✅. 3 x 17 mins with 1 min walks. 
How did your parkrun or (not)parkrun go?
