Tag: 10k

Wrap Up and Run

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I feel that there been a lovely symmetry to this week. On Friday, I finished a spectacular piece of knitting, namely my Scarf of Doom. The Scarf of Doom is the work of graffiti knitter Deadly Knitshade who was invited onto BBC Breakfast to talk about knitting a few weeks ago. She was asked to knit a bright, chunky scarf while she talked, which she did, only for elements of the online knitting community to be hypercritical of, well, pretty much every aspect of her telly appearance. Her response was one of the most graceful, humorous and quite frankly bloody marvellous things that I’ve ever read (you can read the full story here, please do – my summary doesn’t do it justice).

Knitted with two strands of double-knit on 15mm needles. The wool is from my stash (from the top it was bought for a tea cosy, the same tea cosy, pizza bases, various vegetables, flower petals and beaks, grapes/aubergine)

As someone who responds to the question “So what kind of things do you knit?” with some slightly embarrassed foot shuffling and “Um. Dinosaurs. And um, chickens. And peas. And tiny hats. And stuff….”, I was liberated by Deadly Knitshade’s definition of ‘squeeeee knitting’ (it might be made out of scratchy, fluorescent acrylic yarn, but people look at it, want it and go ‘squeeeeee’). In the spirit of solidarity, it seemed only fitting that I should knit a Scarf of Doom. Also, Deadly Knitshade promised a medal for those who made one. As Ginge will testify, I have a Muttley-like love of medals and the lure of something shiny is all that I need to motivate me for a lot of things.

Monkey's disappointment at not getting another medal was soothed by his new scarf.

Sadly there was no medal on offer on Sunday’s Wrap Up and Run 10K in Southport. This was organised by Age UK to raise awareness and funds to help keep older people warm during the winter months. I entered on a whim this Wednesday, when the weather was balmy and spring-like and I couldn’t help but think that maybe Age UK’s campaign was a little mistimed. Ha. The Met Office promised heavy or light rain and temperatures of around 5˚C (which would feel like 1˚C). When we arrived in Southport, there was a bitter wind that chilled the steady drizzle and resulted in me looking spectacularly grumpy (there is photographic evidence of this. I won’t be sharing it with you).

I was cold enough to consider joining in with the warm up. At my only previous race where there has been a pre-race warm up (Liverpool Women’s 10K) I avoided it because it looked like it required far too much coordination for my paltry skills. Today I muttered darkly about not being here to jump up and down, I like running and if I wanted to do jumping, I would go to…jumping practise (I said I was grumpy). My grudging participation was rewarded by the friendliest, most laid back, random warm up (given that the chap who did it didn’t look like the ‘Camilla’ who had previously been introduced, I suspect he was a last minute replacement) that ended up with him accepting heckled exercise suggestions from the crowd.

The only downside of the warm up was that I landed slightly awkwardly when we were jumping (typical, it turns out that I need that jumping practise after all) and twanged my ankle. As I lined up at the start, I tried to ignore the fact that it felt like a slight sprain (twelve hours later, I had a dull ache and some slight swelling in my right ankle) and concentrated on the task in hand. I haven’t been following a training plan, in fact my running has been a little erratic of late, so I was intrigued to see how I would get on in my pursuit of a sub-60 10K.

Setting off, I was very,very cold. My feet were numb, my hands were freezing. As we ran along the coastal path into the wind, I really started to doubt my sanity. For those of you who don’t know Southport, it is extremely flat and there is a dearth of tropical palm trees to act as a windbreak from the breezes off the Irish Sea. If I’m honest, there’s a lack of anything to act as a windbreak. If I’m completely honest, there’s usually a lack of sea as well. Anyway, I abandoned being able to consult Miles in favour of pulling my sleeves down over my hands in a pathetic attempt to retain some heat. This led to a breakdown in communication between me and Miles as I managed to press his stop button and didn’t realise for what turned out to be about half a mile (when I realised that I had been running 0.69 miles for ages).

I can only apologise to the poor woman with the lovely knitted ear-warmer who I sidled up to and stalked for a bit so that I could get a proper look. And also the very tall man who ran with his feet turned out and I followed because he looked like a hi-vis emperor penguin. Apart from the soul destroying part at 3K where you could see the marker for 4K just to your right, but had to run around the boating lake to get to, the KMs seemed to pass fairly quickly. I felt strong and comfortable and we didn’t always have to run into the wind. At 8K, I ended up grinning like an idiot at the sight and sound of the drummers who welcomed the runners into the home stretch. My legs, trained to keep my feet to the beat with AudioFuel, took on a life of their own and my pace ramped up to 8.34min/mile as I bounced cheerily past them.

The finish line in sight, I managed a bit of a sprint at the end, collected my water, t-shirt and mars bar, was reunited with a well wrapped up Ginge and risked charges of indecent exposure as I changed tops in the car park. I was very pleased to get cosy with my woolly hat, a flask of tea and my Scarf of Doom and within minutes of arriving home, I’d had a text to confirm my chip time as 1.00.31. All in all, it was a rather good morning.

UPDATE: I forgot to credit Ginge with the Southport photography. He definitely manage to capture the bleakness of the day. Though he didn’t manage to capture me flicking the Vs at him during the bouncy warm up.

Throughout March, there are some more Wrap Up and Run races coming up in Coventry, Exeter, Cheshire and Yorkshire – if Southport is anything to go by, I would heartily recommend them no matter what your running experience.

My first 10k race

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Well it had to happen one day… Way back in December, when I was full of the same giddiness that made me apply for a new job, I closed my eyes and posted off my entry to Run Liverpool for the Women’s 10k. I then spent 4 months trying to forget what I’d done, especially when my runs became increasingly sparce and even a month ago I doubted that I could do more than a few miles.

After a  few words of wisdom and encouragement, I had a boost of enthusiasm and when my race number finally arrived, I was strangely excited. I knew I wasn’t going to produce a world beating time, but had done my research looking at last year’s results and, in my heart of hearts, knew that I wasn’t going to come last. Having said that, even on the day I was still muttering darkly about the whole enterprise.

I think I heard that Liverpool is the second biggest women’s only event and it’s certainly one of the longest running (25 years in 2011), however  there’s been some debate over the future value of women only events, especially with the massive growth of the Race for Life events. Can a women’s only race survive whilst attracting elite runners and still being completely inclusive? Some of the pink girliness leaves me a bit cold (but then I’m a miserable bugger) – especially when I rummaged in my goodie bag to find it full of Ladies Things (fabric softener, sweeteners, teabags and, ahem, feminine hygiene products – well that’s my life as a woman summed up in 4 freebies). And despite all the reminders to go at our own pace and enjoy it, I found it a bit disconcerting to run past people walking before the 1k marker.  Although I’d not specifically chosen this race because it was a women’s event, I do think the absence of wiry men in tiny shorts helped my nerves on the day and it was pretty ace to see over a thousand women of all different shapes, sizes, ages and abilities all running together.

In the end, I didn’t finish last (hurrah!) and had a time of 1.06.07 – I’d have been content with 1hr 10min, so I was more than chuffed with this! The only problem is now I’d quite like to get my time down to under an hour and I’m disturbing myself with my conviction that I can actually do this.

T-shirt and medal

Liverpool Women's 10k - proof!

Nothing to declare but my laziness

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Hmmmm. I signed up for this blog back in January. Since then I have managed a fabulous tally of zero posts – this should give people an idea of how I go about doing things. With all my projects I have a tendency to travel hopefully but rarely arrive – my knitting bag contains a pair of slippers (each foot in 6 pieces) and 10 rows of a shawl. I have never worn a shawl in my life, but that didn’t stop me cheerfully embarking on the thing, carried away by gorgeous wool and a mental image of me sitting outside a tent with my shawl wrapped around my shoulders. Incidentally, in this picture I was a stone lighter and working a stylish barefoot, outdoorsy vibe,  rather than the ‘only allowed out with a responsible adult’ look that I tend to work whilst camping.

My point being, I rarely finish a bloody thing (but have lots of good intentions).

Now, the thing I’ve found with running is that there is no end. Well, there’s the bit where I collapse in a big sweaty heap, my head gently pulsating, but you’ve got to keep going with it. You can’t just say, “well I can run 5 miles, that’s that”, there’s always 6 miles, or a faster 5 miles, or 5 miles with a big hill in the middle.

Also, I’ve learned in spectacular fashion today that being able to run 5 miles and then training haphazardly for a couple of months does not mean that I can pick up where I left off. Which is funny, cos I thought I could….

So why have I finally started writing this? Well, at the start of the year I set myself some running goals one of which was to run my first 10k. Since January, I have done nothing particular towards achieving this. In the last couple of days, I found No Boots and read about her goal of running the Bristol Half. I found myself feeling slightly shamed that the only excuse that I have for not doing a paltry 10k is laziness. Laziness and a fear of coming last.

So, I’m now the proud owner of an entry form for the Mersey Tunnel 10k in a couple of months. All I need to do now is fill it in, send it off and get off my lazy bum.