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| With Jason, before the Race |
I set myself the Race for Life challenge when I turned 40 in January this year. I had not run since my 20s and back then I really didn't enjoy it and quickly gave it up. My husband has always enjoyed running, and ran the London Marathon a few years back. Both my sisters, brothers-in-law, and brother also run so I was starting to feel a little left out!
My first runs were short - and embarrassing! Who thought I'd ever been seen out in public wearing Lycra! But I soon got the bug and wanted to keep going and build up my distance. I entered the Race for Life and chose the Chelmsford event at Hylands Park rather than the closer Colchester event as that did not offer the 10k option. By then I was up to 5K in training, so thought I'd give myself the extra challenge!
It was a great day - so many women taking part! Hylands is a beautiful park - that certainly helped on the way round. The whole route was on grass and I found this quite hard going as the majority of my training is road based. It's pretty uneven running on grass and I longed to see a bit of tarmac as I plodded on! It was tough when the route split just before 5k - the 5k women went towards the finish line (I could hear the cheers!) but the 10k racers carried on.
I finished in 55 minutes and am proud to say I ran the whole distance. Very proud of my medal - I know thousands of women now own one but it's my first medal EVER! Even more proud that I raised over £200 for Cancer Research UK and I ran for my Aunt who lost her battle with cancer a few years ago.
So if you're thinking of Race for Life next year - go for it! I'll be there again I hope, and both my daughters have said they want to run with me next year! A new generation inspired!!
I'm now training for the London Kilomathon on 28th October 2012.
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