In July, after a cancelled trip to Switzerland (you can read this post to find out why I’ve not been training as much), I did Google search of races I could travel to from London and ended up in Eton at the Dorney Dash 10k.
To set the scene: I woke up on Saturday 26th July five days clear of a boyfriend break-up and had been having a pretty poor week. I didn’t want to get up at 7am for the train, I didn’t want to go outside into the sunshine, I didn’t want to speak to smiley sporty strangers and I especially didn’t want to run 10km around a lake on a blisteringly hot day..
Lisa Millen, my own personal cheerleader on speed-dial
However, along with a good old dose of bloody-mindedness, my dear friend Lisa was up early on that Saturday too and sent me endless texts of encouragement and reminded my why it was a good idea to be doing all of the above.
I spent most of the race following a girl with a big butterfly tattoo on her shoulder, choosing her as my pacer. I found her again at the end and thanked her for the help in keeping me going and she told me she’d been pacing herself off my running too!
After the race, deciding I didn’t have quite enough money for another taxi, nor would I expect one to be easy to pick up so far from anywhere, I thought I’d give hitch-hiking a go. Now, before my mum panics, it wasn’t real hitch-hiking- everyone in the vicinity had just run or supported someone running the race. After a few false starts with people going in the opposite direction from me, I got picked up by a Mini-Cooper convertible with two guys in it that were heading the same way as me. As things went, I’d been stopped earlier to take a photo of these guys with the running club team and they “couldn’t forget those gold shorts!” and decided to return the photo favour with a lift to the train station. Runners are a nice bunch.
RUNNING RACES, IN DIFFERENT PLACES 