Sheffield 101010

101010 10th Oct 2010 what a sucker for a novelty run and in my home town too. What a shame (can you hear the voices of Robbie and Gary now? – ‘ all together now ‘Oh what a shame’,….) I was a poorly purple person having just got back from Turkey the evening before with throbbing headache and Turkish Tummy. No excuses me Lady, you will run and you did.

So there had to be a day for a poor performance this year or was that just a “not so good performance as usual”. Performance. With three weeks rest from running after my Great North Run PB there was no expectations on this race anyway. Estimated Finish time: 50 minutes. Yes I had my GPS phone on me too – Endomundo – pah not very.

Yet conditions were perfect, a gorgeous October morning, slightly overcast, no rain, fresh and autumnal. The ground was a little muddy but heck worst conditions have been recorded in the height of summer.

The timing ‘pens’ were about as meaningful as cramming 200 free range chickens into a 10 (1010)mm square of fencing or a biro running out of ink. Yet I already felt like a biro that had run out of ink and I hadn’t even started. After the weak warm up everyone just piled to the front, leaving some of us sub 45 and 50s near the back. Woof.

You can run with the big dogs or you can sit on the park bench and bark

A slow start round Endcliffe park on muddy grass dodging the joggers who go round and round and round – yes it was already a blur and I had only gone 200 metres. Onto the footpaths and people were apologising for getting in the way (!) Hurumph.

Onto the trail and over tree routes and roots and stumps and I am stumped and through mud and up and down and round and round. A gorgeous park / trail run but still very busy as I ran behind many others unable to get any speed up even if I wanted. My Turkish tummy full of Turkish un delight. Swish swash swush. Even my talking phone was not motivating me, in fact it was putting me off – 8min something mile – I would be lucky enough to finish in a sub 50 at that pace.

This was two laps, as the dog barked. Water at the 5km mark was well received as back onto the green green grass of hope I went, and plodded on, I could have run this faster in wellies. My GPS was telling me I had run 3 miles in 24 minutes and something or other. Even the encouragement from fellow runner Alex who sped past me telling me lap one was just the warm up failed to make my little legs go any faster.

In bits I found myself almost walking not so much due to illness but due to congestion up the slopes as people in front almost stopped, rather frustrating at times but that’s the joys of trail runs or was I just little miss grumpy today? Down the grassy slope and frown for the photographer as it was all down hill from there onwards.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired

I just wasn’t passing trees like they were standing still. Even the last 1km was a miserable finish for me, I felt deflated, with no energy, no bounce, no smile, just heavy and ready to bow down in disgust at my performance, unable to even make a sprint finish. 2 minutes slower than most of my 10k times this year with no injuries this time. A known disappointment but the thing is that I will not beat myself up as I know there are lessons to be learned.

But actually I clocked in a time of 47.57 and was 5th F-Sen and 128 out of 699 runners so really not all that unrepresentable. It just felt uncomfortable. Unfortunately. Positive thinking girl, positive thinking.

Shame about the goodie bag – a pile of leaflets that my paper box will enjoy, and the ‘technical t-shirt’ that was a bright red cotton one, although it did have an ode cityscape to Sheffield on it, after all it was in Sheffield. Rah to something. Perhaps I was just being a down right Mardy northern lass.