I love how this church looks at night. From our house you can't really see it, but its always a striking picture as we drive from home or to home at night.
March 2006 Archives
This morning I woke up, tired and stressed. I immediately knew what the problem was. I haven't run in 2 weeks! Which is why this evening I found myself running while watching a lovely sunset and chatting to Andy about the past few weeks and how busy work has gotten.
I requested to be on support for the past 2 months because in general it is less stressful, but as life would have it, it turned out far busier while I was on it than was anticipated. Which left me exhausted at night and in general unable to do anything but fall into bed. I was so tired that I found myself unable to sleep.
Tonight I'm sure I'll fall asleep without problems though. I had a nice 20 minute run and a 32 minute cycle and feel much more relaxed already. As we speak, Andy is in the kitchen, busy frying the chicken in tikka paste and preparing some jacket potatoes. I'm slightly sleepy, but ready to take a nice, long, hot bath and then crawl into bed and drift off to dreamland.
In other news: As mentioned in the previous entry, I volunteered to be a marshal at the Ashby 20 which is hosted by our club every year. At 9h00 when I arrived at race HQ, I was informed that they didn't expect me (somehow my email apparently never reached them), but since another girl didn't pitch up, they had a space for me to encourage and point the runners in the right direction. The point I stood at was at both the 1 mile and 19 mile mark, which was great as I could basically see how the runners looked at the start and how they changed faces during the race.
It was a really cold morning and I had a nice thick coat that I took along to keep me warm. After all of the athletes passed me after the first mile, I made my way to the 8 mile mark which was only a short walk down the street. There I helped out with filling water cups and handing it out to a few of the leaders. When it was time to go back to my station, I walked up and... left my coat in the car.
Unfortunately there was no time to go back to the car before the leaders arrived and after that it was one after the other ... 2 hours later... after standing in 1C weather the whole time, I finally finished up and got my coat. My hands were blue with cold, but thankfully I didn't pick up a cold.
The race was great and I felt quite inspired after watching all of the people finish - some with very painful looks on their faces, others with big smiles.
Yesterday I was a marshall at the club's local race... and I found something that really inspires me.
Have a look HERE to see what I mean.
They took part in the race, which was freezing, but I felt completely inspired by what I saw.
After finding out that my major migraines were caused by stress I took thing easy at work last week and didn't do much running until Friday when I was given the all clear.
Two weeks ago I entered the Friskney Half Marathon with the thought that I could go do a slow run as a long run on the past Sunday. If I didn't feel like it on the morning, I could always stay home and run here, but if I did, I could go run with a 150 or so other people.
So on Sunday morning we set off for Friskney (it is about 2 and a half hours from here) with 5 of us in the car. The other girls were pretty jolly and even Andy (the club coach) joined in all the chatter and gossip. When we got to Friskney, we found an icy breeze blowing while the sun was shining brightly. Not a problem. On with the gloves and long tops.
3 minutes before the race, all the women in our group decided (without reason) that we were going to take off our long tops and just run in the vests. The race started as soon as we got back and within the first 500m I realised that I was going too fast. So I slowed down and settled into a lovely pace which had me looking at the fields and the people and in general just thinking way too much.
Friskney is a flat half marathon. No, seriously. There is just about no hills - and the ones that are there, are barely worthy of being called hills. They also seem flat. The only disturbance in the race was the cold wind that picked up in strength when we started running.
The kilometers ticked by, not particularly feeling hard and me keeping quite a steady pace.... then came mile 10 - we made a left turn and... got hit by a strong, icy wind... straight from in front of us. My legs (not being used to temperatures THIS cold) seized up and made me understand that if I was going to run in that wind, I was going to need something a little warmer. With 3 miles to go I suddenly felt every muscle in my legs move with each step.
So, I took a few walking breaks and then ran again... overall this is what my times for the individual kilometers looked like:
Total Time : 1:58:41
I'll definitely run this race again - it was great. Hopefully next year we won't run into that wind again :)
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