12.5 miles and still standing #makeitcount

SO TODAY I DECIDED TO DO DA TING!

Despite the fact that this weekend did not go the way I had planned AT ALL!

Actually, it started with Friday and me missing out on my 5 mile run in the morning…

I was still a bit fragile on Thursday evening from my fastest ever run on Wednesday night, so I decided to do my 5 miles the following morning, but exhaustion got the best of me and I decided to sleep not run.

I figured the Spartan session in the evening would make up for it, but no amount of cross-training will bag me those miles I so desperately need for Berlin! So despite having an amazing session with Chaka Bars & the crew, I was feeling a bit guilty for missing out on my run.

For the weekend I had nothing else planned apart from studying, recording my radio show and making an attempt to run 10 miles.

Safe to say nothing went as planned! DOES IT EVER!?

I allowed myself to have a lie in on saturday morning, nowadays that means sleeping to 09:30am the very latest, and I made a fabulous weekend breakfast to celebrate life and how far I have come on this long journey without giving up.

After my posh breakfast the plan was to quickly record my new Little Miss Sunshiine show and seriously get cracking with my university work because I am so behind on writing & publishing my assignments that I feel ashamed and incredibly guilty.

But somehow I managed to completely lose track of time and all of the sudden it was past 10pm and I had to go to bed to prepare for my long run with Candice in the morning.

I didn’t have any dinner or anything, I literally played music for about 8 hours straight! (Damn! I can’t even remember the last time I had a Saturday all for myself where I just played records and enjoyed my own company! That’s kind of sad in a way…)

Anyway, I got up at about 6am today ready to go!

I wore the clothes I am planning on wearing on race day, I ate the food I think I will eat if its available on race day, I did the active stretches for my legs and knees, hell I even did a very light jog before doing the run so I would warm up – all so I can go through my race day routine as good as possible.

I met up with Candice at Crystal Palace. I was beyond excited to run with her but also very nervous at the same time. The sun was shining, I had prepared the most amazing playlist to run to and I was secretly praying that my legs would be able to carry me 10 miles.

We ran from Crystal Palace to Brixton to Vauxhall across Vauxhall Bridge past Lambeth Bridge to Westminster past Waterloo past Blackfriars across Millennium Bridge past London Bridge past Tower Bridge past Bermondsey and past Rotherhithe all the way to Canada Water.

12.5 MILES BABY!!! And for those of you who don’t know what that is… 20.1KM BABY!!!

It’s a shame my Nike+ wasn’t 100% spot on with the GPS on the map but here is an illustration of what we ran:

I’m not going to lie – it wasn’t a stroll in the park!

I was holding up ok until about 10 miles in and then my legs started to go a bit funny, then my ‘bad knee’ started to misbehave and towards the end I had an incredibly painful pressure thing happening in my right ear (no idea what that was!?!?!) but I knew I had to carry on for two main reasons:

1. I had doubted myself and my ability to do something like this since before I even signed up to do the Berlin half marathon. So I desperately needed these 12.5 miles in the bag to assure and reassure myself that I do have it in me, that I am a runner and that I can overcome and accomplish anything if I really want to. And today really ended up being the confidence boost I needed – not just when it comes to the running but when it comes to life in general too.

2. I couldn’t be “the weak link” today because I felt like I needed to lift our running spirits if we were going make it alive – something was up with Candice and I wasn’t sure what it was but I knew I had to do something to get her through those miles somehow.

I’m sure I slightly annoyed her a couple of times, including when I got the tourists outside houses of parliament to cheer her on so she would start running when she had stopped or when I shouted at the big crowd on millennium bridge asking them to tell her off for being lazy. I sang, I danced, I tried to motivate and be happy and be serious and literally do anything in my power to keep her going, and by doing so, keeping myself going.

You see, Candice is an incredible person and I have so much respect and love for her that simple words are not enough to express how I truly feel about her. Im going to be honest here, I don’t know her that well, but if I had a boat and I could only take 5 people with me to an island, she would be amongst those 5.

Me and her are very different yet very very similar. I am so happy that I could share my great accomplishment with her today because she is one of the people that have really motivated me throughout this whole experience and journey, even if that might have been unintentional from her side.

I know that this running thing has changed both of our lives for the better (even through the shitty & horrible parts of it all) and to think that this is just the beginning of an incredible journey and adventure makes me very excited and scared at the same time.

I just hope that me and her will be able to share days like today many times in the future, because these are the ones that build character as well as friendships.

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