Friday 23 March 2012

I accidently lost my running group and achieved a personal best

I was having a terrible day on Wednesday.  I felt mentally and physically exhausted and was having thoughts of I want to give up.  However I'd made a committment to join the Sydney Northern Beaches group for our Hump Day run at 6pm that night, and I am a woman of my word.


Looking from Queenscliff SLSC at bottom of picture
to Manly and North Head Reserve in the distance
So I turned up at Queenscliff Surf Life Saving Club (SLSC) thinking "I'll just walk this one in and a tick a box".  As we were waiting for everyone to arrive, I'd only half listened to the discussion on where we were running and then once someone said "let's run", I took off and was with the first 3 runners. 

As we got near Manly Beach, I had to stop for a pee.  I told Jenny, who I was running with, "you go ahead and I'll catch up".

I came out of the bathroom, ran to the Manly SLSC and up the stairs behind the club, thinking I was following them.  But as I came around the corner, I couldn't see anyone and I thought "oh they must have decided to run up Darley Rd (the hill behind Manly Beach) after all", so that's where I went. 

I thought I saw a familiar running shirt in the distance, so I kept running up the hill trying to catch them. I didn't stop - past St Patricks College, Manly Hospital and through the gates of North Head.  At the School of Artillery (where they film the Biggest Loser), the path ran out and that's when I realised I had got it so horribly wrong (or if I kept running, I would wind up in Sydney Harbour) that I turned around and ran all they way back to Manly SLSC.

And guess what I found?  My running group, doing stair runs.  It turns out they had only run around the corner to Shelly Beach and wondered where on earth I was.  So I did a stair run and by then it was time to turn around.  I did interval runs back to Queenscliff.

After just on an hour of running I'd done 658 cals, run a massive hill that I would never have believed I could run, and ran a personal best distance of over 9kms.

Sometimes its amazing what you can do when you don't have time to think about whether you can or you can't, you Just Flipping Do It and I felt fantastic.  My awful Wednesday turned out to be one of my best days yet.

1 comment:

  1. Congrats to you - a pb is always tremendous and especially on a day where you just didn't feel like it!! Glad you found your girls eventually though :)

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