Dear all,
It was an exhausting, exhilarating and exhausting again experience running the 10 kilometre race at Regents Park this Saturday morning at 9am. I finished with a time of 58mins 58.7sec. A personal best from my training point of view and also seeing as it’s my first ever 10 km race.
I woke up still stuffed from eating a pot-full of pasta with mascarpone sauce the night before and took the 6:45am “redeye” train to London. By the time of arrival in London I was hungry again and so bought several bananas before ambling my way to the race venue (more on bananas later….).
It was cloudy earlier on but the skies cleared up which made me regret not bringing my sunglasses but that was the least of my worries. The usual irrational thoughts went through my head: looking at the fellow racers and how well kitted and exercised they are (damn I’m gonna finish last!) or from sweating with the relatively high humidity (I’m gonna pass out into the duck pool to cool down on the last lap!) before even racing!
Tick tock bang! And off we ran! We were probably about 100 runners. The circuit is a simple 3 laps within the park making up the 10k (3.33 km per lap). I pretty much maintained myself in the middle of the race but there were lots of over-takers throughout (another irrational thought: don’t look back, you might be the last one!). My pace was pretty good on the first lap and I could have easily done the race in 52 mins at that rate. There were water points at the end of each lap but I spent most of the water just cooling off my face as it was simmering in the humidity! On the 5 km mark I was doing ok, albeit a bit slower but my pace reduced considerably as my leg muscles started protesting and making excuses. My heart and lung units were still chugging along. (Usually it’s the other way around – muscles powering away like dynamos and heart and lung creaking like they need servicing). At 6 km the leader of the race overtook me. He probably finished at 34 mins!
On the final lap there were a few bursts of inspired faster pace but the uphill sections were murder as my thigh muscles were now becoming allergic to inclines, sweating, and short busts and threatening to go on cramp mode. But it was not so bad compared to a few people whose muscles simply went on strike. I recommended one girl to see the physio on standby at the end of race! I couldn’t even sprint on the home straight; it was more of a sprint as seen in slow motion. It was so good to finish and fall on the soft grass. The excellent race organisers handed out water and bananas. Bananas galore to the point that there was so much surplus I bagged 3 bunches. In the end I rewarded myself with a full English breakfast at the Globetrotter pub on Baker Street.
The things we do to raise money, eh! My dad just had to remind me that I did a half Tergat (Paul Tergat is a famous Kenyan long distance runner – who goes to the same barbershop as me in Nairobi believe it or not, £1.50 a cut – with shampoo, bargain!….I digress), an encouraging reality check (the glass is half full)!
My new Hope and Home friends in Nepal will probably be amused and impressed by this effort or probably shrug and compare it with their efforts climbing Everest, Annapurna or K2 making me feel like I took a brisk walk to the London Zoo to feed the monkeys bananas.
Bananatastic! By the way, it’s still not too late to honour pledges and donate. I still have a month to go before I travel. At the moment, I estimate that £200 has been pledged. The £500 target is for real, let’s do it! Many thanks!
Kyrea
WRITTEN ON MONDAY 3RD SEPTEMBER
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