Conquered!
One more notch on my belt. A seventh race bib for my fridge. Don’t mind if I strut a bit after this one.
This weekend I conquered the feared Around the Bay 30k road race. And I did it in 3 hours and 21 minutes. The fact that I would finish at all was, at times, dubious. It is a hard race. There are hills in the last 10 kilometres and it’s stinky when you run past the Hamilton Water Treatment Facility. We had to run across a bridge made of mesh steel. I didn’t love that part. And there’s a mammoth hill at kilometre 25, just as everyone warned me, with ambulances parked at the bottom and at the top. I assessed, at that moment, the speed at which I was running versus my walking pace and made the decision to walk that hill. Thankfully, I did not require either ambulance.
The best part of the race was having the wonderful surprise of seeing two friends from work at kilometre 18….then again at about 20…..and a third time at 24 (when things got very dismal indeed). They said they thought I looked good, but what they don’t realize is just how much seeing a friend on a race course lifts your spirits. It made a world of difference. I might have yelled, “I’m going to finish now JUST FOR YOU!”
The last six kilometres were very, very difficult. But I had carefully written a quote on each of my forearms, and although I didn’t roll up my sleeves, I repeated them to myself when things got bad and I had to really “dig deep”.
My left arm said, “If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep going.”
My right arm said, “Difficult things take a long time; impossible things, a little longer.”
One more notch on my belt. A seventh race bib for my fridge. Don’t mind if I strut a bit after this one.
This weekend I conquered the feared Around the Bay 30k road race. And I did it in 3 hours and 21 minutes. The fact that I would finish at all was, at times, dubious. It is a hard race. There are hills in the last 10 kilometres and it’s stinky when you run past the Hamilton Water Treatment Facility. We had to run across a bridge made of mesh steel. I didn’t love that part. And there’s a mammoth hill at kilometre 25, just as everyone warned me, with ambulances parked at the bottom and at the top. I assessed, at that moment, the speed at which I was running versus my walking pace and made the decision to walk that hill. Thankfully, I did not require either ambulance.
The best part of the race was having the wonderful surprise of seeing two friends from work at kilometre 18….then again at about 20…..and a third time at 24 (when things got very dismal indeed). They said they thought I looked good, but what they don’t realize is just how much seeing a friend on a race course lifts your spirits. It made a world of difference. I might have yelled, “I’m going to finish now JUST FOR YOU!”
The last six kilometres were very, very difficult. But I had carefully written a quote on each of my forearms, and although I didn’t roll up my sleeves, I repeated them to myself when things got bad and I had to really “dig deep”.
My left arm said, “If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep going.”
My right arm said, “Difficult things take a long time; impossible things, a little longer.”
2 comments:
CONGRATS Melissa! You're amazing.
love d.
You look good my dear. Mary
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