I’m just not a fan. I enjoy, well… pretty much anything other than the prospect of running. Until a few months ago…
Whilst at university I have been lucky enough to coordinate something pretty awesome – it is called Schools Plus and it aims at helping educational inequality. Educational inequality and children not reaching their wonderful potential sucks; it’s unfair, archaic and to be honest it makes me pretty irate. However, Schools Plus provided a solution to my rage, offering me a tangible way to help by volunteering in schools. So, that’s what I did, alongside 65 other trained tutors. We all went into local schools and offered help from being a primary reading aid, to running a GCSE science club.
My year with Schools Plus has been incredible; I have greatly enjoyed doing something proactive outside my degree and have met some inspirational people. However, it was one of these said inspirational people who somehow (miraculously) roped me into running 10K for the Southampton Schools Plus scheme.
When it was suggested that we run 10K to fundraise for the programme to continue and improve next year I simply laughed. Anyone who knows me knows that exercise is not my forte, to say the very least… The prospect of me running over 6 miles is just hilarious.
Despite this I had a belligerent committee who were all far too excited
by the prospect of sticking to their new year’s resolutions and doing something
good for a great cause: consequently, from fear of becoming an unsupportive
coordinator I somehow found myself joining in. Running 10K seemed impossible,
but I could always potter on behind offering some motivational words…
Yet I was not able to get out of it that easily (as if!). A few days after it was confirmed that we would all RUN this 10K we met on the common for a day I will not forget.
Yet I was not able to get out of it that easily (as if!). A few days after it was confirmed that we would all RUN this 10K we met on the common for a day I will not forget.
That day I hated everything – especially the person who had made me do this stupid stupid run… (Lucy I am looking at you!) We tried simple interval training, but running for two minutes killed me, no joke. The prospect of running 1K was looking distant.
Just to paint the scene as to how utterly hopeless I was – having not done exercise since year 11, I turned up ready to run with a handbag. I didn’t bring water, but I somehow remembered lip gloss. Oops.
Credit (so so much credit) has to be given to my amazing committee who didn’t give up at the start, when it would have been so easy to give up. They persevered, arranged regular running times and pushed through. And somewhere along the way, somehow, I got myself running shoes and starting enjoying myself. It was still painful but it was the good painful – the painful which makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something.
Not only this, I discovered something even better along the way – my amazing committee!
They became great friends and having seen me at my worst - red faced, angry and out of breath - they still managed to encourage me to go further.
So, after a lazy Easter gorging on all the Italian food I could find I
returned to Southampton having not run in 5 weeks. The return was horrible. I
had lost all my marginal fitness and it felt like I was dying - all over again.
However, we persevered and this week I have run 25K. WHO KNEW THAT WAS EVEN
POSSIBLE!!
It came as a shock to me, and more so my mum who was utterly disbelieving when I told her. For someone who couldn’t run, I was actually running quite a lot.
It came as a shock to me, and more so my mum who was utterly disbelieving when I told her. For someone who couldn’t run, I was actually running quite a lot.
Next stop, half marathon. Seriously, you can’t stop me now!
All this training is put to the test next Sunday when we enter our race. Personally, I am not too fussed about where I place; this running journey has been far lengthier than the 10K that day. I learnt that I enjoy running, that I can do exercise, that I have some good friends and that it is possible to persevere when your body is screaming out for a doughnut. AND I managed to go through that journey for Schools Plus, a programme which has already done so much for me.
10K might seem short to a lot of people, but to the people who hate Church Lane hill and the steps into the Maths building… the people like me, then 10K is not a short distance.
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