What a great day! I managed to haul myself around the Bristol 10k today in one hour and 36mins, which is probably about an hour after the front runners finished but I am really pleased.
I really didn't think I would even finish the event, I was so convinced that I would be bailing out half way round that I arranged to meet my girlfriend at the 5k point so that we could go home and enjoy the rest of our Sunday.
But somehow, despite the heat and the lack of water stops, I decided to keep going and I'm really pleased I did.
My basic plan was to try to run the first ten minutes, and then see what happened after that.
I started quite far back in the field (there were thousands taking part it was great), and I quickly moved to right to the tail end and stragglers.
Soon it was a straight race between me and the power walkers, which was a familiar position to be in.
I was still thinking about the joy of finishing half way round, but once the body shock calmed down I felt pretty good about it. I kept going by keeping my eye on one particularly strident power walker and broke down the running to ten minute chunks, with a few minutes walking in-between.
As I turned at the half way point to come back down the Portway I was pleased to see there were still some people coming up it and so were behind me. There weren't many though, it must be said, and they included a couple of women doing a three legged race.
It was a really hot day as well, I did have images, possibly hallucinations, of headlines in the Evening Post along the lines of 'Man, 34, collapses on the Portway during hottest day ever to run a 10K', above a picture of me spread eagle on the tarmac, but I kept going.
To reach the finishing line was just such a great feeling. The best bit about it was that there was nobody really in front of me or behind, so the whole crowd were clapping and cheering me on all the way home, which did a lot for my ego, and my legs. I spotted the power walker I had been following most of the run with about 100m to go, so found the strength to put a bit of a sprint on and tore past her, oh yeh, I owned her.
It was great to finish, and to think I must have run at least 75 per cent of it, when I seriously thought I wouldn't even get half way round, has really inspired me.
London marathon? How hard can it be? (I do know how hard, just give me my moment).
