Eight hours later and I think I'm just coming back down to earth (with a mighty bump as I'm knackered). Today I entered my second 10K race almost 6 months after my first in October - after which I was side-lined for 10 weeks with an IT band injury.
Today's race started from the Glenlivet distillery, situated among the Braes of Glenlivet. That name tells you about the nature of the course (for those who don't know 'braes' = hills!)
For weeks I've been thinking about the course and especially about what they call a 'steady incline' - a 100m ascent over 2km. Plus there is another 100m ascent throughout the course. I've been very slowly plodding up a similar gradient on one of my local running routes. All this training didn't make the hill, sorry steady incline, easy, but made it just about runnable. That, and a rather fast first kilometre when I was shooting downhill at speed, really made the rest of the run pretty tough. I felt at my worst struggling up another incline at kilometre 7, when I glanced at my watch and realised the fastest runners would now be sitting inside enjoying a cuppa!
I didn't look at my watch again until km 9 - it read 55-something minutes. Oh my, much as I would have loved to do a 10K in an hour, I knew I couldn't run one kilometre in five minutes.
Still, I got a new 10K PB by finishing just over the hour. The time from my race chip is 1:00:44 I'm happy with that
I was glad I'd braved to just wear a t-shirt and shorts despite it only being 10°C and raining when I started. I felt really uncomfortably hot running and think I'll need to get a running vest.
After the race I felt really strange: a mixture of runner's high - I couldn't keep still and was fidgeting about (probably still the adrenaline) - and cold and clammy and wanting to collapse. But we (DH and DS were my supporters/photographers) hung around for the prize-giving, then once I'd changed in the car, I felt better. We decided to go on a guided tour of the distillery since we were there and I enjoyed a wee dram of the stuff at the end of the tour! We also got miniatures of The Glenlivet 12 year old single malt in our goody bags. As in the photo above.
Like the previous event, this was organised by the charity Chest, Heart, Stroke Scotland and again like the previous one they announced that they'd made over £11,000 from registration fees and donations, plus the same again from sponsorship.
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swanscot
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Well done! Great time, especially with all those hills. That sounds like a really hard run, so I'm not surprised you felt a bit odd at the end! You are a very tough lady!
Well done swanscot wonderful time girl, you flew that one. Must have been the thought of the dram at the end of it all. Many years ago friends of our and hubby and I used to go away for the weekend hill walking. 2 - 3 munroes and a visit to the nearest distillery for the tour and a dram, Glenlivet was one of our favourite ones.
Fantastic. Sounds like a great day. I can only dream of running that far that quickly! I don't actually like whisky to drink but for sentimental reasons (Scottish mother and huge clan up there, plus memories of my dad) I like the idea of it.
Thank you all. It was a tough race, but mainly because as I've been training hard for it for months, I really wanted to push myself, so I did. When I got to 40 minutes and was struggling I thought about first running for 20 minutes during C25K and how I had to keep pushing on, I remembered Laura saying at some point in the programme about the feeling of satisfaction from keeping going was far better than any short satisfaction from stopping.
I'm quite chuffed with my placings too:
Overall : 348 / 466
Gender : 123 / 213
Categ : 14 / 29
Amazingly the third woman home was a super-vetran (50+ category) in 46 mins! So maybe there's still time for me to improve my time!
That's a great achievement, Swanscot! You must be very proud and the stats are great, especially in such a hilly region. I know that area well, as my dad was a very keen fly fisher and so I spent all my summers in the Spey valley. If the weather wasn't suitable for fishing we went round a distillery instead
Thanks. I've just updated my original post to change the photo; I thought maybe it's not seen as a good idea within the NHS HealthUnlocked communities to be seen to be promoting alcohol! And I wouldn't have done the race if I'd not found this community
Finally read the blog (although I saw the PB on Garmin). WELL DONE SWANSCOT!!! You did fantastically well to be so close to an hour. Thank you for your inspiration
A fantastic time Swanscot, and aren't they exciting stats??! I've only done the one 10k race and that was hilly too so I do empathise! In fact most people walked up the hills, but still managed to overtake me on the flatter bits. Its a tough distance because you have to keep the speed up for the full 60 minutes which is quite a challenge. Well done
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I'm happy with that 
Cheers! 
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