It’s been a manic month! But not in terms of running. As far as running goes I seem to be falling apart….. I had a week or two where lots of little niggles seemed to be starting up: my feet ached; my hips were sore; something popped in a calf; my back spasmed; I felt ill one day. No one thing was particularly epic, just all added together had me feeling a bit down.
In the rest of life, I’ve got engaged and got a new job. March has been an exciting month! If you go back to the very beginning of this blog you’ll get an idea of why getting engaged is such a huge deal. I never thought I would again. Part of me is still terrified. But the person who gives me the confidence to go out and do what I want to do will be the one that is by my side. Running has really helped me know the person I am and have the confidence to stand up for what I want. The relationship I have with my OH is a very equal one – we are two adults whom chose to be together, but support each other to be very much individuals too. Watch this space for the wedding photos!
Dalton Dash 2017
Last week I ran Dalton Dash 10k. I wasn’t looking forward to it as I’d really not been feeling good the previous week, but I decided to go and start. If I had to pull up, well that is what I’d have to do. My OH offered to run with me but I knew that if I needed to stop he would want to stay with me and I really didn’t want that added pressure. The course is a very rural one, starting and finishing in front of the house and running out of the grounds and onto country lanes. It is undulating, but nothing too bad. I started very steady and decided very early on that I wasn’t going to look at my Garmin at all, not to check my mile pace / distance, anything! 
The course was marked in kms and I used my mental strategy of ticking off the kms rather than adding up (6 to go, 5 to go, 4 to go etc, rather than 1 km run, 2 km run and so on) as I find this really does work for me. I set off very steady and just aimed to try and find a rhythm. We’d only been running for less than 10 mins and a lady fell into step beside me and started to chat. I quite like this. I like the fact that it doesn’t matter that we didn’t know each other, that we’d never spoken before, but we had in common this moment. We chatted until the water station where I didn’t stop for a drink (just before the biggest hill on the course – I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to have a drink!) and I had my head down to aim to run the whole of the hill – and I managed it !
I knew from then on it was relatively easy for the rest of the course so tried to pick up the pace a little. I was pleased with how I was feeling when I’d been so worried about completing the run. The last two miles ended up being the quickest miles of the race, so I’ll take that as a result! Official finish time 58:02.
a mile run 
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