Hi there and welcome back to my blog. How are you? I hope that you are well. Today’s blog post is about what happened on my 5K. Next month, I will go into detail about how I did it.
The day started off quite well, I woke up full of energy and excitement. I had my breakfast, had my morning tablets, and got ready to go.The race was in Stoneleigh Park in Coventry, which was a short 15 minute drive for my dad. My dad pulled into the car park and dropped me, my mum and sister off and we had to walk quite far from the car park. I walked a little bit faster because I had to get my number plate and my back message papers.
At about 10:30, I had my morning fruit and I was ready. My sister said to me before I left, “Quitters never win, winners ever quit!”. This was really helpful, later on. I got into the crowd and a guy on a stage told us to talk to the person next to us. I spoke to a mum who was walking with her child in memory of her father and her grandmother. I told them why I was running and they were really impressed. I showed this woman a picture of fat old me, after my fluid blockage and she said, “you look like a different person!”
Before the race started, the guy on stage bought on a women from some gym and got us to do some stretches and dances. After that, a doctor came up and started talking about prostate cancer.
Once the race began, I put my music on, put on my runkeeper app, put my watch on workout mode and off I went. I walked far too quickly for the first 15 minutes and afterwards, I slowed right down. I then saw an old woman walking with a young woman, hand in hand, and that really motivated me.
A gentleman running the race, ran past me, tapped me on the shoulder and congratulated me on my progress. I yelled back at him, thanks. Later on, a different old woman walking with a young child told me “well done, keep going”. I said to her, thanks and you too.
By about 3K, I knew that I was over halfway, so I had a chocolate bar, that I bought from a vegan festival, the previous week. By 3.5K, my headphones died. So I was chanting to myself, “Quitters never win, winners never quit!. By 4K, I knew that the majority of the race was over. Towards the end, I started to sprint for a short while, then I saw the magical 5K sign, which was before the finish line. I slowed down, took a couple of sips of water with coconut sugar in it and stopped all of my devices.
When I crossed the finish line, there was a bell. I rang that bell a couple of times, yelled out thank you, to the crowd who were saying “Well done”. I saw my mum and sister at the finish line and I was laughing when I saw them. I hugged my mum and my sister had to remind me to get my medal. After that, someone from Cancer Research asked me a few questions about me. I gave her my email address and phone number.
Afterwards, we had to put our back message onto a wall, using our safety pins. In which my mum did for me because I was far too tired
I was starving so I started eating a falafel wrap that my mum made before we came out. Then i rang my dad to come pick us up, and we had to walk back to the car park. An older gentleman walked passed me by the car park and made a funny comment about how this was worse then the race.
The weather that day was quite cool, better than the previous day, which was the hottest day of the year so far (until this past week, when it was over 30 degrees). I had bought out some ice cold water with coconut sugar to give me a little energy boost and to cool me off, but I didn’t need it. Only took a little sip about the 3.5K mark.
I can honestly say that I had fun on my first 5K. I think that I’ve got the running bug. I’ve already back on the treadmill again after taking a week off it, and I’m going faster than last time. I’ve not entered another 5K yet but I would like to do one more before this year ends. My time was 63 minutes, which is slightly quicker than my aunt, who ran it without any training with a short notice.
That’s it for now. Once again, I just want to thank a few people. Firstly, I would like to thank my mum, dad, sister and my Naughty Mamaji, for being by my side, throughout everything. I would like to thank Louise from BTS for sharing this with the community. I would like to thank Kanika, Shirley and everyone at Carers Trust for giving me the confidence to sharing my story and I would like to thank Joe for motivating me to getting back on the horse. And I would like to thank everyone at the hospital, my family and friends and everyone who I’ve met on this journey.
Next time, I’m going to talk about how I trained for this 5K.
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Thanks and I will see you soon
