Oxymorons on Sundays

Sunday mornings are typically known as the one morning a week where you can be forgiven for having a sleep in and perhaps even brunch due to the time you actually get around to eating breakfast.

Not this Sunday - not for me.

Today I was competing in my first ever timed fun run.

There it is ladies and gents - the oxymoron of the day - Fun Run.

Does it sound fun to get up early on a Sunday to run 10km in what could possibly be miserable weather? No? I didn't think so.

I didn't let that deter me though when registrations opened a while back penned my name to the 10km challenge. I figured that I'd train hard, commit and I would run the whole 10km.

Ha ha ha. Yes, I did run the track 2-3 times, yes I did work on my running but I was nowhere near prepared for today.

Whilst driving in to the start the butterflies that had happily been flying around in my tummy gave birth to elephants. Elephants with wings aren't graceful and my brain started giving me excuses and telling me that it was okay to pull out - after all it was early, cold, wet, I was tired, nervous, hungry, nauseous - seriously my brain had never come with so many excuses in such a short period of time.

Obviously my brain is still catching up though because it doesn't control me, I control it!

I decided to continue. I met up with Mel before the race and bumped into several others whilst waiting for the start.

Here's the pic of how I looked at the beginning.

Then we were ushered to the start line, and completely unprepared we were off. I had already told the girls to go ahead as I was running my own race. Slow and steady wins the race I told myself. I ran the straight starting stretch, round the corner, back down past the club - OMG - it dawned on my that I'd been running the whole time.

Damn! Shouldn't have thought about it, all of a sudden my lungs felt like they were going to explode so I slowed down to a fast power walk. As I neared the Cri, I'd worked out that I wasn't last, but by no means was I powering this race.

There was another champion (Donna) like me pounding the pavement to smash an earlier set goal so we decided to push each other on.

As far as we were aware there was only one other behind us.

We kept pushing each other and cheering as we ran over the bridge, through wet grass, a bit of mud and back to bitumen. Donna was an awesome motivator, without her I don't think I would have smashed my goals.

We pushed through people, we pushed past people, we pushed through pain barriers and mental hurdles. I never thought running could take so much out of me.

When we came close to the finish line, as we were second last, we decided to finish together. We tied second last (or so we thought) but we finished and we both beat our pre-set goal to finish in under 90 minutes. Our finish time? 1 hour 21 minutes.

Here's me after the race

Here's the HRM to confirm my time and that I SMASHED it - what you can't see on that shot though is my average heartrate - it sat at an 'average' of 165!! I only had 1 minute in zone 1, 30 minutes in zone 2 and the rest in zone 3 - I was stoked.

So what happens now? Now I get home, snooze, write this blog and contemplate my next 10 km run, I start setting new goals and a new training plan. I own this. I can do this. So many times I've heard "fat people can't run" - what a load of croc - just because we carry a few extra kilos (that we're desperately willing to give away) doesn't mean we're not fit and we can't move.

For anyone out there who isn't their ideal weight - don't give up. If I can do this - so can you! Set a goal, work towards it and achieve it.

This is 2012 - make this your year!