Category: Vitality London 10,000

Happy Global Running Day!

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I just found out that today is Global Running Day! An appropriate day to have completed my first run since last week; 3.52km in 30 minutes.

It’s been just over a week since I went to London and ran in the Vitality London 10,000. I already wrote about how proud I am of myself, but to celebrate Global Running Day today, I want to tell you about some observations I made about myself while I was doing it.

The major one was that rather than becoming tired, having expended my energy, I actually found that the experience, in particular the actual running, got easier as I went along. My total time was 1h22m19s but the timing devices on our shoes also recorded the time at which we crossed the 5km halfway point and it turned out that I completed the second 5km 8 minutes faster than the first 5km!

One factor of this I think is the breaking down of the mental barriers that had got me so nervous. In training I’d be getting tired and sore around 2 or 3 km and I’d think ‘I can’t do it’ and stop. On the day of the 10k though, giving up and going home wasn’t an option. I had to push through whatever I was feeling and just get on with it. Doing that, and finishing the race gave me the proof that actually – I can do it!

Another observation which was slightly less positive was that my ankles were BURNING. That’s part of what I had to push through and fortunately that got more bearable and less severe as I went along. I ran from the start line and the first time I felt like I had to slow down and walk was because my ankles were hurting. But as soon as I slowed down, they hurt even more! That was a pretty unpleasant conundrum. I’ve been to see a sports physio who suggested that the burning pain may be some irritation/inflammation of the tendons around my ankle joints. I need to take it easy until I’ve had that investigated a little further I think, because I was told that that type of irritation can increase the chances of stress fractures. But I’m not going to stop running and I’m going to aim to run 5k regularly now as part of a general exercise routine.

This newfound ability to run makes me feel like a kid with a new toy!

I Did It!

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10 weeks ago I decided to take on the challenge of running 10 kilometres in the Vitality London 10,000.

In that time I’ve been through a range of thought processes from ‘Hell yeah I can run 10k’ to ‘Running is actually quite hard’ to ‘It’s okay, I’ve still got time to pull it back’ to ‘Crap, it’s in 2 weeks and I’ve barely run more than 3km’.

I stopped writing so much about it as the event got closer ’cause I became really scared that I wouldn’t be able to do it and I knew I hadn’t trained as much as I thought I would. This was down to a range of reasons including bad mental health days, family members in hospital and stressing about uni exams.

At the beginning of the process I felt really confident and was running in the gym every couple of days. Then I took my training outside and realised that running on the road is way more impactful on my ankles than running on a treadmill. Before Monday, I hadn’t run more than about 3km in one go.

And yet, I completed my first 10k in 1 hour, 22 minutes and 19 seconds! When I crossed the finish line I was so bloody chuffed with myself and two days later I actually still can’t quite believe I did a 10k!

I need to shout out my amazing boyfriend, Toby, for coming with me and waiting for me at the 8.5km mark to spur me on for that last stretch! I ran with my phone in my hand so that I could listen to music and he kept sending me encouraging messages along the lines of ‘Keep going! You can do it!’.

I intend to keep training and keep running, so it probably won’t be too long before I’m doing another 10k! I’ll let you know!

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10 Weeks to 10k

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On this day a year ago, I returned from my amazing trip to Australia, all 3 months of which, I documented on this blog.

Today, I’m going to start documenting an entirely different, but (hopefully) as exciting and fulfilling journey…

But first, a word of context. Someone who really inspires me in the area of body confidence is Giovanna Fletcher, author, actress, wife of McFly’s Tom Fletcher and mother to three adorable (according to Instagram) little boys. Giovanna, who tends to be known as Gi, knows that even though her body may not look ‘perfect’ according to society’s ideals, it’s done so much for her and deserves to be loved and taken care of. One of Gi’s body’s achievements is giving birth to her three children and if you’re familiar with any of her work, you’ll know this is what she’s most proud of.

I haven’t been all that happy about my body in the last few months. I’ve always had issues with my back and my knees, I regularly see a chiropractor to keep my spine from crying, and recently I’ve felt so lethargic and lacking in energy. Things like exhaustion, headaches and lack of sleep come as symptoms of my poor mental health. And while they won’t officially diagnose me with asthma, I use a Ventolin inhaler to keep me from wheezing when I exert myself a little too much. My body may be keeping me alive but sometimes I feel like it doesn’t let me do much more than that.

I want to do something to remind myself how amazing my body actually is and what it’s capable of, and give myself a chance to nurture it while also giving it a gentle push to get its act together!

Obviously, bearing children is not part of my immediate plan, so I can’t use the same approach as Gi Fletcher, but I can attempt something else. I’ve decided to run the London Vitality 10000; a 10k race, taking place on 27th May.

I think it will be an important and challenging experience for me, plus I miss writing something that isn’t lecture notes, so I’m going to write about my training journey on this blog (Pipe down, I never said it would be exclusively a travel blog!). (EDIT September 2022: I did do that but have archived most of the posts!)

The run is in 10 weeks, so I’ll be starting from scratch and publishing plenty of posts about how I’m getting on. Also, if you’ve done anything like this yourself (Mickie, I’m looking at you), I’d LOVE your advice. As someone who doesn’t usually run unless it’s for a bus, I’ll be needing as much help as I can get.

(Featured image courtesy of https://www.vitalitylondon10000.co.uk/)