A great winning team!

 

What a fabulous day I have had! A combination of good food, great friends and a fantastic run. Not necessarily in that order 🙂

It involved good planning and great teamwork with my husband.

This was the day of the Spiegelplas-loop organised by my running club – the Bergse Runners. I had invited friends to run it. One of then is Steve Barlow who is a personal trainer and he brought two of his clients whose goal was to run 10 K.

Joost and I had prepared some yummy incentives for after the race. Many of these bought and prepared under the guidance of Udi of Udi’s Goodies in Bussum (where I had spent two hours tasting, deciding and receiving “coaching” on Friday :-)). We tried to stay healthy – broccoli soup, tomatoes with olive oil (special tomatoes from Sicily), prune and walnut log with goat’s cheese and quince jelly, green salade, slade of feta cheese and artichoke, stuffed vine leaves (the last two from the Turkish shop in Bussum in the same road as Udi ) and Joost’s speciality – Bruchetta. BEFORE we could eat any of we had to run the race.

There 5 of us running and 2 supporters. We started off well with a warming up session given by Steve – to EVERYONE!

I was not exactly sure how this race would go for me. I seem to have become accustomed to running slowly and to heart rate I. By bottom does not seem to want to get itself in gear any more!

We all started together. We had all said that we would run somewhere between 50 – 60 mins. Erik-Jan and I were a little ahead

I was already running in Heart Zone II. Ummmm… At almost 2 klm Steve and Yvonne had caught us up. I heard Steve coaching Yvonne – “if we want to run 50 mins then we need to speed up a bit…”. I decided not to listen to him and also not to listen to my peeping heart meter. Erik-Jan seemed to be challenging me as well! I listened to my own body – it was good to run by Joost, Rebecca and a great supporting neighbours with 4 of us almost together!

I let the others go on and found a good rhythm. Erik-Jan found a good rhythm also – the same as mine 🙂 and we ran together up the boring straight bit out of the village to the 5 klm marker. “now let’s begin” he said. And indeed we set the pace just a “tikkey” higher.

Now we were running round the lake. We encountered startled cyclists and dog walkers and ran passed a lady who swallowed a fly (isn’t there a poem about that?) just as we past her!

At this stage we were sheltered from, what had been a wind against us, and could enjoy the fantastic weather – blue sky, blue lake!

We were now at an average pace of 5, 21 min per klm. Each klm I could hear from Runkeeper that we were shaving the time off. I started to target people in front of us to overtake. It was rather fun. Without going mad, I could see that we were gaining on almost everyone now.  Little by little we overtook the runners. At around 8 klm Erik-Jan started dropping back – or did I tick up a noch? I could hear the band playing and imagined that quite a few people had already finished.

Focus, focus, focus… I concentrated – 40 mins (indeed the fastest man was c. 34 mins!) – could I finish in 10 mins. That was not realistic but I did not have that much more time that I had to run! I must now be at 1,5 klm to go – that is c. 10 mins. Steady girl focus on the end sprint, leave some puff over.

Encouraging words from the stewards who were mostly people who I know from the Fire brigade/ Ice skating Club etc. All volunteers and they did a GREAT job.

I could see the finish. I focused on a girl in orange. I tried to get nearer to her. She was too far away to overtake and she was also speeding up. The focus pulled me away from thinking about my body to being “pulled in” by her. The last grassy bit! Yesss a sprint finish and I was just under the 52 mins . I was very pleased given the current training scheme. Runkeeper did something a bit weird but most of the race is recorded!

Steve and Yvonne achieved their target of 50 mins, Erik-Jan was just behind me – this was a PB for him! and Karin came in under 60 mins. Everyone very happy!

During the prize giving there was also a raffle that you were automatically entered for with your number. 3 of us won prizes! I was very pleased with my number belt – its been on my list of running stuff to buy for a while.

Back to our garden. Food was a great success – I think the people had a great deal to do with it too! All in all a winning team 🙂