I’m very excited and proud to write that last week I finally ran 21 kilometres!!
My sister was home from London this week which means lots of socalising and busy days so I really wanted to try run the half marathon distance before she arrived as I knew I wouldn’t get much running done while she was here!
So last Friday I had three hours free while Charlie was in playschool and I set out to run 21k, or even somewhere near it! It wasn’t a great day weather wise, it pretty much rained the whole time but it was light rain so I didn’t mind. I started with a nice slow pace and didn’t push to get that down at all (I probably wouldn’t have been able to anyways)
The first 10 kilometres were ok and seemed to go by by quick enough, I did wonder when I reached 10 if I should leave it at that and try the 21 another day but I’d built myself up for this run all week so I put that idea out of my head. The furthest I’ve run before was 16k so pushing past that was almost nerve wrecking.
I’ve heard of people doing 18/19k with half marathon training and pushing for the 21k on race day, but for me I just really needed to know I was capable of it before the half marathon race in May.
By the 19th kilometre I was pretty tired and tempted to stop and walk for a bit but I knew if I did that it would be almost impossible to start running again so I kept pushing on. To be totally honest I was feeling a lot better than I thought I would, had I been running at a faster pace I’m sure that wouldn’t be the case but the pace I was at seemed to work well for me. I was absolutely delighted when I reached 21k!! My time was 2hrs 2mins which I was happy enough with, but I hope to complete it in under 2 hours come race day. Its still feels surreal now, if someone had said to me this time last year that I would be able to run 21k I would have laughed in their face!!
I definitely won’t be in a hurry to run that distance again, while the actual running was tough it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but the aftermath was a different story!! I called in home when I finished and grabbed a glass of water and a protein ball from my sister in law, before I drove in to collect Charlie from playschool. By this time I was feeling really miserable, I was so delighted with my achievement but physically I was nauseaus and really weak. After a couple of hours and a rehydration sachet I began to feel ok again but I really need to look into fueling up properly and maybe taking in something during the run on race day as I don’t want to experience that crash again!!
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