#longshaw

I spontaneously decided to do a local trail 10k race this Sunday and I’m so glad I did, it was amazing! I haven’t done any specific training for it at all and I’m coming off my little winter break, plus I’ve barely run hills for the past ~1.5 months (at least not in the way you need for running in the peaks - my long run last week had almost 300m of elevation gain but that’s basically nothing here), so I normally would have a) not signed up for the race or b) decided to just take it easy. Today I decided to be brave and go all out, and I did! I aimed for sub 1h, which I missed by just under 2 mins, but I tried really hard and that’s all that matters. The course is apparently a bit longer than 10k too, my watch says 10.3 km and the people I ran with who have done it several times agree that theirs usually do too. It was also just so much fun, literally the most beautiful course, even though we had to do two laps I didn’t mind at all. I was freezing cold at the starting line and started off relatively fast trying to warm myself up, but it starts with a very gentle downhill and I was constantly stuck behind people on the single trail. Especially annoying was the wait at a gate where I stood for almost a full minute, still freezing and watching my goal pace tick by >.> but after that it got better, had a lot of fun on a very muddy, more technical section in the woods. The first uphill felt amazing, I was gasping for breath by the end of it but I ran all of it! And recovered very well on the flat/gentle downhill before the second hill. That one was harder but I still ran all of it. Then there was a turn into the full-on (30ish km/h today) headwind which I ran into feeling badass. After a short downhill-ish section in the wood I crossed the finish line, starting the second lap. I cruised the downhill this time, talking to another runner for a while and accidentally ending up with a 4:50 split in the process :’D I told him to go on just before the hill because I wanted to recover a bit for the hill and actually walked a part of the very muddy section, which was a mistake because my legs seized up and my morale went steeply downhill. I did make it up most of the hill running though so I was really proud of that. Also passed the guy I had run with on the downhill haha. The second hill was a lot less fun - I walked quite a bit, then started running again at the top. The push into the headwind felt INSANE this time around and I was struggling so hard. Just before the last downhill I overtook one last person, and she was on my heels for the rest of the bit before the finish line which gave me the strength to go all out into the finish – the split for the last 0.3 km was actually 4:20 like whaaat. I felt like I gave everything while doing it but recovered very fast after and thinking back, I was happily chatting to that other runner in the beginning of lap 2 while running a sub 5 km, so I probably could’ve gone harder. Which is the main reason I do long tempo runs in training – because they help set me up mentally. I’m actually looking forward to “properly” training again soon and will start building mileage back in the next few weeks :) still, this was great to see as a baseline, and I’m mostly just happy with how much fun it was too. (Also just found massive blood blisters under both of my big toes and have no idea why, no new shoes or anything, and basically running is a very glamorous sport.)