First real race

It wasn't a promising time to run my first race.

The last three weeks have been spent almost non-stop at the PC, completing (or nearly) a huge data entry task for a client before we go on holiday. This meant that the dodgy left hamstring and now even dodgier right hip were wrong before I started!

And this week's weather has been the pits. We're not talking "a bit of rain" here - I can cope with getting wet - we're talking torrential downpours and howling gales. My two planned runs earlier in the week just didn't happen.

But I wasn't going to give up (Kim wouldn't have let me, anyway), and off we went to Wroxham for the third in the Wroxham 5K series. The rain, mercifully, held off, and it also meant that the running conditions were much better than we'd anticipated.

Taking all those reasons (who said excuses?) into consideration, I was actually pretty pleased with my achievement. My hip was hurting like mad as we finished, but I kept a pace of slightly under 7 minutes per km, and came in at (I think) just over 34:30. Which, given that my R4L time back in May was nearer 39 minutes, was pleasing. (When the results are published, I'll link to them - although I'll be surprised if we are more than six from the bottom of the list!)*

I was really pleased that Nikki came and found me - she's a fellow runner-blogger-Norfolk inhabitant. She had the advantage of knowing what I look like (there are no photos of her on her blog) so she could identify me! Her times were a lot more impressive than mine - you can read her entry about the race here.

Finally, here we are after the event. None of us in action - sadly, Malcolm & Sue weren't there this time to take photos of us - and carry our water bottles!!





* Checking the results on the Norwich Road Runners site, I find that Kim & I came 260th and 261st out of 265 runners in a time of 34:32. It's somewhat daunting to realise that the fastest lady in the race (age 17) did it in 17:42 and the fastest fella (age 30) in 15:13. Good grief.