The finish line! Race For Life! 

 

 

I’m so delighted to say that this year, my friend, Catherine, and I ran a 5k Race for Life to raise funds for Cancer Research UK.

 

Like many people our families have both been affected by cancer and, along with many others, we wanted to do our bit to help raise money to find a cure.

 

Catherine and I had begun to plan this 12 months ago and I’m sure that you, like me, have experienced that big events like Christmas, suddenly present themselves much more quickly than we would like! 

 

We are both reasonably fit, as we walk our dogs daily so we knew that we could at least walk the distance with no trouble!! That was our ‘we can do it’ default setting.  We kept saying to each other ‘well at least we can walk it.’  So, plan A was run it, plan B was walk it!! 

 

With that in mind I began my training a few months before the big day – when out with the dogs I'd run a bit then walk a bit.  With the dogs I really didn't have much choice to be honest as they constantly wanted to stop and sniff (my walk time) run and chase (my running time).  I always think that the dog walks are their time and so I started by pacing myself with them.  

 

Occasionally I found that I was able to run a longer stretch and eventually I could run with fewer and fewer stops.  The dogs picked up on this and were happy to follow my pace.   To my surprise I realised that I was running a full mile!  With this, I began to feel more and more confident.  

 

I set another goal for myself that I could practise running 3 miles.  However with all of the best laid plans scuppered by my busy life, I didn’t get the time to develop or achieve this goal and not surprisingly neither did Catherine.  So we revised our plan, now plan C and we decided that we would just take our time and run and walk in order to get round.

 

When Sunday came we set off towards the back of the group – we learned later there were 2,800 runners that day.  We'd been given advice like “start slow then slow down” and that sounded good to me!  

 

Because of the sheer number of the ‘Pink Army’ of runners we had to take it slowly and then when there was space we moved on a bit.  When there was an uphill part we walked fast.  When there was a downhill, we ran!

 

 

Jane and Catherine looking great on the Race for Life

 

 

We got to the finish line in about 47 minutes.  It didn’t matter that some finished faster, because we were thrilled to see our families there waving us on.  We were just as proud as if we'd run in record time!  We had set our goal last year, paced ourselves, worked around timescales, workloads and commitments to our families.  Staying focused, being flexible and adapting to circumstances paid off!  We did it!

 

Jane xx