I could apologise for the length of this post, but then again my race reports are always stupidly long 🤷♀️Sorry!
🥇 Organised by Runthrough, this is a closed road race, on relatively flat (aka gently undulating) roads, with about 2300 entries, starting and finishing in Altrincham town centre
🥈Race Review:
Recommend? Yes
Pros: bib in the post, good communication pre-race, easy and cheap parking, no loo queues 30 mins before the start (honestly!), great atmosphere, closed road, gentle undulations, pacers and ‘finish line friends’, well supported, nice medal and good choice of goodies, free photos and free personalised video
Cons: no nature immersion, river/sea/lakes or big views, so not the prettiest of routes
🥉Race Report:
I was expecting very little having volunteered at another Runthrough event at Dorney which I felt was poorly organised and lacked atmosphere, but I have to say it was way better than I expected and I liked it!
On top of my low expectations, I’d had a terribly emotional few days leading up to race day, little sleep and I was generally in a pretty bad place mentally. But I was there, and close enough to the start line to at least begin the race.
Despite arriving in Altrincham just 30 - 45 minutes before the start, there were no traffic jams, parking was easy and just a few minutes walk from the start line. After an obligatory trip to the loo was achieved in mere minutes due to the lack of queues, I still had a fair bit of standing about to do; but the ‘race village’ was at the intersection of two shopping streets - crowded and positively buzzing - so I just waited and tried to absorb the vibes. There were 'target time placard' holders spreading themselves out, and we were urged to get in line according to pace. Despite my downbeat mood, I still held a desire to run sub-60 minutes, so I positioned myself between the sub-55 and the sub-60 placard holders (acknowledging to myself that that would be bordering on cocky even if I was in a good mood, so what on earth was I doing? looking for a kick up the butt is the answer to that question😃 ).
Shortly before the 9:30 start we began to move forward. And forward. And forward. The arch I’d seen turned out not to be a starting arch but a finish arch. So still we moved forward, but inevitably we eventually reached the line and were on our way. Though it felt long, to be fair it was only about 5 minutes slow walking🙈
It was much warmer than I had thought it would be, given the cloud cover, and I wasn’t carrying water thinking that a water station at 5k would surely be enough. There's nothing like not having a drink to make you feel thirsty though 😎To my surprise, at 3k, The Malik family (multi generational, with a sign that told us this was water from the Malik family) had set up their own station and were frantically dishing out plastic cupfuls which proved very popular - I’ve seen supporters with placards, jelly babies, hoses … but this is the first time I’ve seen a full on water station provided by local supporters🥰 Sadly I’d run past before I fully realised, so then I was ultra thirsty for the next 2 kilometres!
It’s fair to say that a few folk had passed me, but not the sub 60-pacer and not everyone!!! I knew I was going at a faster pace than normal these days, but physically I was still OK. I walked while I drank my water at the 5k point and then set off again, but by now I only had half a heart in this race, at best. I’d decided this was going to be bad. Funny what our heads can do, how limiting our thoughts can be. I shouldn’t have needed to walk again, but my mind was easily winning the battle and sure enough, by 7k I was walking again. Then came a climb just beyond 8k and … yep, you guessed … I was walking again!
When I set off running once more, I was thinking I’d probably need another walk before the end. I really had no motivation. Then I looked at my time and figured, you know what, this is actually going pretty well despite the walks; if you could just run in to the end I reckon the sub-60 is yours for the taking. Is anything broken? No. Do you have pain anywhere? No. Are you gasping for breath? No, not really. Are you being a wimp? Yep. Would you like to salvage something from this horrible weekend? .. well, errr, yep, that really would be good …, how long would that take? errr, not too long, less than ten minutes I guess ... Can you do that? maybe ...
So on I ran!
I ran past three young girls with a homemade cardboard sign that said ‘You can do it!’ (or something innocuous like that); but as I ran past them, the middle lass - sporting a pair of cute grey cat ears - looked me straight in the eyes and shouted ‘you can do this’ as if she really, really meant it; and I thought yes, yes, I can, I really have no excuse! 💪🙏
And then we hit the final climb. It felt brutal, even with my refreshed determination I could only lumber up it. Suddenly, like some sort of weird hallucination, coming down the hill towards us, I saw a very jolly chap in a bright purple t-shirt, stretched over his extremely rounded belly. His t-shirt announced that he was a ‘Finish Line Friend’. I’d read about this volunteer role - they spot struggling folk and help run them over the line. Well, I'd come this far, if I was going to finish this, then I was going to do so myself without help from a finish line friend!!! To that end I avoided eye contact, so when, in true Sergeant Major fashion, he suddenly yelled ‘I can’t see any sign of sprinting here’ I jumped to attention, muttered to myself that that was because we were going up the hill, but grinned all the way to the top (still couldn’t sprint though) 😍 (Someone later commented that he'd make a great alarm clock every morning!).
As that final hill flattened out it felt as if someone had physically shoved me forwards - I must’ve put a bit of effort into that hill after all - and finally, there was the finish arch just metres away.
I ran across the mat knowing that the sub-60 was mine, knowing that one good thing came out of the weekend, because I made it happen. And I felt more than a little bit better for it 🥰
Two sub-30 5ks, with the second one 4 seconds faster than the first (despite those walking breaks) and best of all, a sub-60 10k for the first time in a couple of years. Result.
Even better, 10k takes so much less out of me than a half marathon, so I climbed the stairs back to the car and left the lift for someone else😍. A decent walk yesterday, then a nice 20k 'easy' long run today.
My head’s still a mess and there's a lot to come to terms with, but my legs are strong. My running is keeping me going. Onwards to fight another day!!! 🏃➡️
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