10k Blog

Dunnit!

Managed it in a time of 47:47, which is a personal best! This time, however, we got a Tracker bar, a bottle of water and a medal (pictured above). Nearly had a total nightmare trying to get there (I had gone as far as booking a rental car from York, which would have cost us £20 - cheaper than the £25 taxi fare), but Ben and Kelsey came to the rescue, and drove us over there like a pair of sweethearts.

It was a beautiful course, Castle Howard really is the most extravagant setting I've come across, with battlements and follies all over the place. And a rather steep bridge in the middle of a field, which the sadist who planned the route kindly took us over. Other favourite parts of the course: going past another part of the route (with one solitary runner coming the other way), thinking that it was going to loop straight back on itself...wrong! It took a minor detour of another 2k or so before arriving at that point...

All in all, a very enjoyable day, thanks again to everyone who took the time to sponsor me (current total £137.50), I really appreciate it. My sponsorship page is open until the 29th of October, so tell anyone who still wants to give that there's still a little time left!

Plans for the future: Training as per usual on Tuesday, then we need to get a new event planned...The half marathon is looking good right now...

Well, the official timing is in, and I came 225th (out of 370). I completed the course in 51:53, so that's given me a good time to beat tomorrow.

Plan of action for today: nice relaxing day, no exercise (our last, very short, run was on Thursday) and to bed early, ready for getting up early tomorrow to get to Castle Howard (despite its terrible transport links...well, that is, if you're trying to get there for 9am on a Sunday).

And then off to Nando's in the evening! Hurrah! I hope, however, that I avoid the dire fate of last week, when we went for a curry at Akbar's in Leeds in the evening...The naan breads were about the size of the table, I don't think I've had indigestion that bad for a very long time! Piri piri sauce anyone?

We did it! One 10k race down, one to go...

It wasn't actually all that bad, we did feel a little intimidated upon our arrival with the hundreds of very sporty-looking types all warming up (much to our amusement), although we seemed to keep a fairly respectable pace for most of it (Jen and I were quite surprised to be overtaking a large number of people on the uphill sections, and then being overtaken by the same people on the downhill stretches). My (unofficial) time was 51 minutes 45 seconds, although official times should be available soon.

At least we have something to aim for next week...