Happy Friday, folks! Hilly 10k ahead...

[Pancakes86]

Firstly, happy Friday to everyone And to those who have to work weekends, I hope it's not tooooo bad!

Tomorrow I will be attempting my first 'hilly' 10k - a Race for Life on Hampstead Heath. Having never been there and also realising it will take me an hour to get to despite also being in London... (the mind boggles) there's a lot of unknowns.. but fingers crossed it doesn't rain, and the hills don't kill me.

Has anyone been to Hampstead before? I know very little about it, apart from the nice houses nearby...!

Anyone else got any runs/races planned?

[Irishprincess Graduate10]

Oooh good luck and enjoy. I think I've been to Hampstead years ago but not as a runner 😏 I hope there's bling 🏅

[Gran4z Graduate10]

How did it go? Was it fun, did you enjoy it? Hills and 10k runs are tough - well the one I did was 🙂🌻

[Pancakes86 Graduate10 in reply to Gran4z]

I’ve never really ran hills before and boy was it painful! I was a little too warm as well, and cursed everything, thinking I was beyond slow.

But, I got into a groove at about 7km and picked up the pace and started to enjoy it. To my absolute surprise, I crossed the line only 4 seconds slower than Vitality (which was a lot flatter!) I got a bit emotional afterwards, because I’d given myself such a hard time but really I did ok, and I should learn to cut myself some slack!

Hampstead Heath is a beautiful park though, I definitely plan on going back for a more relaxing visit!

[Gran4z Graduate10 in reply to Pancakes86]

Wow, sounds like you did amazingly. Congratulations. So many questions, why do we put ourselves down? when really we are all doing something amazing (we got off our backsides and ran!) and you did an amazing 10k, which is tough. Why do we run? Why did we start running? Why do we keep running? Why do we doubt ourselves? Curious 😎.... Have you figured out why? I know I'm addicted to running, it's fun, it can be tough, it's always different, it's challenging etc. 🙂🌻