Hilly 10K (Plus Wrong-Turns, Graveyards, And Battling The Big Q)

• Posted: July 16, 2008
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• Author: Shéamus
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• Filed under: Workouts
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• Tags: First 10K

For a few weeks now I’ve been eyeing the route between my house and that of my younger son’s primary school. According to Google, it’s exactly 6.2 miles. In other words, a 10K. Google has been wrong before, though.

Still, the weather today was perfect and it seemed like as good a time as any to have a go. Normally, I pick up my son by bus, which departs at 2.40pm to arrive at his school at 3.20pm. Today, I set off on my run just after 2pm. While I figured I could run the distance fairly comfortably in under one hour, I didn’t want to take any chances.

Today was also the first day I tried out a few new things.

• I ran with my Fuel Belt
• I listened to music via headphones connected to my Nokia N95
• My N95 was connected to a band around my right arm

I could have opted out of the music, but I really needed the Fuel Belt. While I hoped it was going to be less than an hour I didn’t really know, and it was hot enough today that water was going to be quite important. I have the four-bottle Fuel Belt. This was the first time I’ve ever tried it on with water (i.e., full), and it took me a second or so to get used to the extra weight (each bottle holds 32oz), but because of the way it distributes all of that it soon become a secondary thought.

However, as I got a mile or two into my journey, the pressure of the belt on my abdomen started to make my stomach muscles hurt a bit. It wasn’t terrible, but it was uncomfortable. After about four miles that pain went away, but it was some relief to remove the item when I was done.

I’m getting ahead of myself, however. About one mile in, my headphones had popped out of my ears so many times - my arms kept on catching the lead and dragging it away - that I was frustrated to the point of anger. It was silly, really - losing your temper over a couple of pieces of plastic - but that’s what I did, and it really sucked a lot of energy out of me. Eventually I figured out how to loop the leads through the arm-sleeve of my singlet and that helped a lot (duh), but by then I felt annoyingly drained, albeit mentally.

Physically, I wasn’t tested until about the two-mile point. This took me out of town and up a steady series of inclines that ran for about two miles. You can see the effect on the chart below - it just totally wiped me. I haven’t run that slowly in a while now, but I really haven’t run any hills at all to date. In all seriousness, at the 2.5-mile point I was on the verge of quitting. It was all I could do to say to myself, “Look, just get to three miles, and then we’ll stop then, yeah?” And then do the same at four miles. After that, it seemed to work, as I went a full mile without even looking at my watch (i.e., ‘the zone’).

Things were made worse when I took a wrong turn around the four-mile mark, opting for a bridge over a road as opposed to the road itself (which had no sidewalk), and then found that this took me suddenly sharply left, away from my destination and, ultimately, through a grave yard. While slowing down out of respect might have been the right thing to do, I kept on running right through it - the idea that one or two ghosts might whisper out a motivation-sapping ‘quitter’ quelled any thoughts I had of walking.

After making another bad turn I eventually figured my way back to a main road, but by then was quite a bit off-course. I recognised part of the route, however, and quickly deduced what I thought would be a cut-through back to my destination. By now I’d began to pick up speed (thanks to a long-overdue downhill and then mostly flats). After a few hundred yards or so of wondering where in blue blazes I was, suddenly it all came good and I was on the hill that led up to the school. However, my shenanigans back at the graveyard had led me off-track by a quarter-mile or so and I finished that short when the 6.2 mile mark on my Garmin had been reached. My time was around 52:03.

I could have run further, but this is a new milestone for me, and once I stopped I was glad I did. I was completely shattered. Despite carrying the Fuel Belt, I hadn’t finished all of the bottles (probably around half), and had dehydrated a fair bit (the dark yellow of my urine later confirmed this). I’d drunk 2.5 pints of water before leaving (over the course of the morning), but this obviously wasn’t enough on this hot day. I didn’t have any Coke or bananas before setting out - this might have been a mistake.

Splits and chart:

Overall, I’m okay with the time - I know on a flat course I could go many minutes quicker, but hills are an important part of a runner’s repertoire (certainly in my area), and it’s all good training - but I’m more impressed with the fact that I did not quit.

But I really, really wanted to. And that’s how you learn.

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