by Alan Nelson
As many of you will know, I recently ran in the BUPA London 10k race. From a fundraising perspective, this was a great success. I raised over £1500 for The Alzheimer's Society, which far exceeded my target, so thank you to everyone who made a donation.
I can’t say I much enjoyed the training, although there was always a strange feeling of exaltation each time it finished, but I did really enjoy the race day. There were over 13000 runners so the whole thing had the feel of a big event and it was good to be a part of it.
All in all the experience has got me thinking. When I started out to do this, I wasn’t at all convinced that I could do it. I am quite fit – play a lot of squash – but have never been very good at running long distances. I knew that if I practised a bit I could run 5000m in half an hour – I had done this before - but the idea of carrying on and doing another one straight afterwards sounded impossible. Nevertheless I set myself the challenge of doing it, and in less than an hour.
I started to do some training runs and all I found out was that anything over 5k was indeed a stretch and hurt a lot. I tried to think my way round it. Maybe it was all in the mind. I checked out running sites for tips on technique and approach. None of it seemed to help much. Then gradually I noticed that I could do 6k as easily as I had been able to do 5k before. Then I managed 8k. Finally a week or so before the race I ran 10k for the first time.
By the day of the race I was convinced I could do it. In fact it didn’t seem such a challenge as it had when I first agreed to do it.
So how did I get on? Well, the race was won by Mo Farah. He did it in 27 minutes and broke the British record. He beat me. In fact he had nearly finished by the time my group crossed the starting line! Indeed, as we started to run I realised that I had been too cautious in where I asked to start. I was running past other runners the whole way, and I ended up in the top third, finishing in 57 minutes – not staggeringly fast, but not bad for an old bloke like me.
So what did I learn? I learnt that sometimes, there is no clever way of working out how to do something better. To get better you just have to practice a lot. For a lazy and slightly cocky person like me, this is not welcome news, but in the context of Nelson Croom and our approach to getting people to learn, it is good to remember that sometimes there isn’t a shortcut: you just have to put in the hours!
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