I did another race two weekends ago. It was a girls-only race called the Mariken run, after Mariken van Nimwegen a famous historical woman from Nijmegen, the city where the race was held. It is a big event where about 8000 women participate in a 5 or 10k race.
Of course I did the 5k, because I still (probably never will) don’t feel like running for an hour. I was hoping to set a PR, so the night before the Boyfriend and I went out for dinner with friends and had a blast and way too much alcohol. :P Seriously, I was supposed to drive home; we went by car because I wanted to take it easy and not get home too late because of the race the next day. Halfway through dinner I realized that I had had too much wine to be able to drive, so we decided to take a cab home. But since it didn’t really matter anymore, we ended up in a nice bar drinking cocktails and staying out late. :P
Luckily, I wasn’t hungover the next morning so I happily left for the race, together with a friend from my gym and both our boyfriends as supporters. I figured that the race was going to be either great or a real struggle because of the indulgences of the night before.
Hanging around before the race:
Getting ready to go to line up at the start/warming up:
Warming up was at a soccer field. They made different sections for different speeds (you had to give up your expected finish time when you signed up). During warming up the race started and section for section the field emptied.
I marched over to the start. Unfortunately I was in a different field than Leonie, my running buddy, but that was ok. I am not much of a social person when I am running anyway. Way too busy panting and trying not to trip over my own legs. And off I was!
km 1: It didn’t feel as bad as I expected! I was just running, trying to find my pace and watching the spectators.
km2: the spectators were gone, now all I saw was a huge mass of women running through the woods in front of me. A very cool sight! And still feeling great!
km 3: Almost at the halfway point there was a water post and I got some energy drink. Huge mistake, probably wasn’t thinking. For the rest of the race I was a sticky mess. I also got cramps in my liver area, probably because of trying to drink disgustingly sweet crap from a cup while trying to run at the same time. So I slowed down, then walked for 30 sec and started to run slowly again.
km 4: was feeling better and just kept running.
km 5: I was suspecting a good time, but I had no watch to confirm it. The spectators were back (a lot of men, surprisingly :P haha). I even managed a sprint for the last couple of 100 meters. There were a lot of people at the finish line:
Sorry for the massively lightened up photo. I don’t know what they Boyfriend did, but most of the pictures turned out pretty dark.
I have a picture of Leonie finishing (find Wally):
But my finish pictures were unusable, so here are the official photos somewhere right before the finish:
When I came in I saw the time: 31.48. At first I was disappointed, but then I realized that because it was all timed by chip that wasn’t my time since I wasn’t in the first section to start anyway. Turns out…. I did set a PR!! 30.15 min
At sign up, you could enter a phone number and they would text the finish time right after the race. Pretty cool that I didn’t have to wait until the next day to check the website for my time. It says: Daisy has finished the Mariken Run 5k. Netto time is 30.15, congratulations with the achievement!
You might recall that this is the exact same time as my first race but I have concluded that that course probably wasn’t 5k since there weren’t even markers on the course.
Again no time under 30 min, but it is my fastest to date and includes a very slow 3th kilometer. So I am happy! We can conclude:
I run very well on mojitos!!
It was Leonie’s first race so we celebrated both our PRs with a beer afterwards. Again sorry for the bad quality pic, I am hoping to get one of Leonie and then I will exchange it.
Cheers!
How do you prepare for events like races etc.?
Stay tuned for my next challenge in the sports area….
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