13 miles

So to catch up with the time I've not been blogging I'll start where I left off.  On September 4th I took part in the Glasgow Great Scottish Run.  The course was rather flat and to be perfectly honest, a little boring (give me cross country hills any day! give me pain!) Crossing the bridge was awesome - as was crossing the finish line.  But maybe it's me not having run 13 miles all in one go before, maybe I just didn't have any good tunes on my ipod (anyone tried listening to audiobooks whilst running? Might try it) and although I didn't stop the whole way, I just wanted something else to do other than just run.

Don't get me wrong, it was painful... at about 9 miles my knee actually started giving me grief and it got worse and worse.  So much so that I was trying all different running styles resulting in the conclusion that the faster I ran, the less it hurt!

Anyways, I finished in 2 hours 6 minutes.  Got me a medal, a banana and unfortunately a very bad knee.  Went straight to a physio who advised me I had iliotibial band friction syndrome, which is good to know if going to run long distances in the future (although at the time I could hardly walk - let alone run - and the thought of running a marathon seemed absolutely unheard of.) (Needless to say now that the pain is a dim and distant memory I'm weighing up which marathon to sign up for.)

Aside from my knee injury I also had a killer headache all night after the run, which continued into the morning - I think it was a lack of salt/sugar, because the next day I paid a visit to Glasgow's west end, found a place called Delizique and murdered a mouthwatering veggie fry up, washed it down with an ice cold can of Irn Bru and was feeling back to normal.

Anyways, here are some shots of me running, taken by spies throughout the race course (I didn't spot any of these photographers! Even that one of me immediately after finishing, with my medal - had no idea what was going on.)

Thanks so everyone who sponsored me.  I raised £125 for the Alzheimer's Society.  If you still want to donate I'll be keeping the page up for another few weeks.  And if you've ever contemplated running a 10k or half marathon, I would 100% say GO for it.  (If you've not done a 1/2, start with a 10k)  It's a great way of setting yourself a goal, training, and mentally preparing for something you've never done before.  And the feeling you get when you cross the line is priceless.