It’s nice to do things for charity. Although when I do I often end up doing twatty things.
In July I was bullied into running the British 10K to raise money for The DIPEx Charity which runs (albeit less athletically) http://www.healthtalkonline.org a wonderful website containing brilliantly researched (ahem*) information for patients about living with various health and illness conditions.
Setting off at stupid o’clock, and passing a bike disguised as a zebra, Abi (fellow athlete with prior running experience) and I travelled to London on the bus. We made our way to the starting line and decided to join the crowd at the very front because there was hardly any of them there. That looked like as good a place as any for us and we certainly didn’t want to be stuck with all those people behind that rope.
Heather Small sang “What have you done today to make you feel proud?” and we stopped singing along when we realised that nobody around us was. They seemed to be taking this running malarkey pretty seriously.
The starting thingy went and we set of at a reasonable pace, not wanting to peak too soon. Everyone around us whizzed past, practically jumping over us to get ahead of us. We soon realised the enormity of our error: we had accidentally joined the elite athletes who were probably pretty pissed off with the pair of us. Oops!
What I learned from this is that I am not an elite athlete and that if I were accidentally to become one (again), other true elite athletes should see me as a challenge, but definitely not a threat.
Honourable mentions go to Jo, who also ran, but with the non-elites, and Laura, who wasn’t able to run on the day, but came along anyway to cheer for us and give us cupcakes at the end.
*I am one of the researchers who conducts the ‘brilliant research’ – self praise is no praise and all that, but what we do is pretty cool.
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