It is the day after the race and the team are in major recovery! We all ache from head to toe and are going to be sending Indy to buy copious amounts of cake throughout the week to get us through!
It was a really hot day (exactly what we didn’t want) and the going was pretty tough. There was a point just before half way when I really thought I wasn’t going to manage it. My legs were so sore! The ground was very uneven in places and in some parts of the route the grass wasn’t cut that short so it made running that little bit harder. Once we had passed the halfway point though, it seemed to get easier – I think we had just run through our pain, and mentally knowing that we had made it half way round pushed us on to the finish.
We didn’t run very fast, conserving out energy as much as we could and when the sun was directly beating down on our heads we stopped and walked for a few minutes at a time. If we hadn’t been trying to make it round a 10k race it would have been a really lovely day for a walk in Nowton Park!
We also ran out of water at around 7k and then I think we all had another moment of fear and felt ready to give up! I was gasping and saying to Mel “Water, is there somewhere we pass to get water?” and shaking my empty bottle at her as violently as I could given my serious lack of energy at this point. Just when it seemed there was no hope we came across one of our supporters (Mel’s brother) sitting at the side of the route cheering us on and he had LOTS of water in bottles! I don’t think I have ever been so deliriously happy to see anybody in my life, I could have spent the rest of the afternoon just telling them how grateful I was for that water at that time!
Once topped up with water, the last 3k seemed to go a lot quicker and felt much easier than the beginning of the race. We were all pumped up knowing we didn’t have far to go. When we saw the sign saying 9k we all started to jog a little bit quicker, and we all totally ran the last 500m. I nearly stopped before the finish line because I thought my lungs were actually going to explode and my legs were going to drop off, but I just managed to get my toe over the line before I started hobbling.
We were handed our medals and promptly all fell down on the grass very red in the face. We just managed to stand long enough to have a photo taken with our medals, which actually turned out to be a rather nice photo of all of us – surprising considering we were all sweating buckets and even smiling felt like it was taking considerable effort!
Our time was 1.5 hours and we were all massively happy with this! We have also just about hit our fundraising target which makes it all worth it. We will ache for the next week I am sure, but we wouldn’t change that. Running the Race For Life for Cancer Research was one of the most worthwhile things we have done so far, and we can’t wait to repeat it next year hopefully raising more money and beating our time!
Thank you to all our sponsors and everyone who came to support us on the day. We really appreciate it!
Amanda x
