Covid took an awful lot away from many of us and continues to impact our lives. I hated not being able to run with HPH, parkrun and races so it was a huge relief when things started up again and I was able to run in different areas and with more people than just dragging Alan out with me to do laps around the village.
My biggest frustration remains the effect Covid seems to have had on my fitness (and indeed Alan as well). During lockdown, being told I was only *allowed* to run once a day meant I got quite fit and even managed a 23.24 "not parkrun" in September 2020 which was edging closer to my previous peak times back in 2016. Having the privaledge of being able to work from home throughout the majority of the pandemic meant that both myself and Alan avoided covid until late March last year. We travelled to Vegas in February and ran a half marathon with a decent time around 2hrs 8 and even a day before I tested positive I ran a 24.31 at Pontefract parkrun.
However, since we both caught covid last year, all fitness has felt like a literal uphill battle (with that hill ressembling Post Hill most of the time!) We signed up for the Leeds Marathon (and I still need to write a blog about this!), but Alan had to drop out a few weeks before and I had a lovely race and smiled all the way around, but was very much nearly a personal worst in terms of my time of 5hrs 8 minutes. Neither of us has had a "long covid" diagnosis, so I can only imagine how tough it is for people who have, but just when we were getting back on top of our running fitness last year, Covid put a stop to our hopes for a return to racing. There isn't anything obvious that has held us back from returning to fitness (which is almost more frustrating) but being less active has meant I've put on weight and putting on weight has meant it's been harder to run and I've lost fitness. (I just want to point out that I'm not someone who judges people on weight as it's a very complex issue, but I'm at a point where my clothes don't fit and my thighs are rubbing together and I just like to feel more comfortable when I run, so I'm hoping that some more focussed activity and more considered nutrition choices might return me to a body that I'm more comfortable in)
We have signed up for a few things that we've not been able to complete such as Ilkley Half recently and so when Alan messaged me this week to point out there were still spaces for York 10K this weekend and did I fancy it, I jumped at the chance.
The one and only time I have ever run York 10K previously was back in 2016 and I remember enjoying it, but feeling a bit disappointed with my time of 46.28 (!). It's not as "flat" as you might think, but is a lovely route with lots to keep your brain interested and so I was looking forward to it today, especially as the weather this morning actually resembled summer!
We set off from South Milford at 7.30am and were there in half an hour which left us around 90 minutes to pick up our numbers, grab a coffee and queue for the toilets - this took a lot longer than we'd have predicted and toilet queues were huge and slow moving. We got to the start pen for around 9.20am and we crossed the start line around 9.33am which we were grateful for as there were rumours that they might need to delay the start.
The first couple of KM are a bit up and down through the outskirts of York City Centre and Alan and I always planned to run together and we decided to try keep close to the 1 hour pacers (who were very amusing teasing me with lots of comments about the most annoying HPH members...it wasn't as mean as it sounds typing it out!)
I'd set my garmin to pace us for 6 minute KM and we were ahead of target pace for the first 6KM with sub 6 minute KMs. We loved running past York Minster and all the twists and turns around York confusing lots of early morning shoppers and there was lots of good crowd support most of the way around. I spotted fellow HPH Ande who regularly runs in group 2 when I'm leading, but delivered an amazing performance and should definitely consider jumping up to Group 3. We also bumped into my friend Tana who is a lapsed HPH and had a great race and we had a bit of cat and mouse with over the final 1.5KM..
At 6KM we had to slow a little and have a few walk breaks as we were running up and over several bridges. There is a lovely part where you run over the runners in front of you and can wave! We managed to run the last 800m which was a slightly psychologically challenging out and back along the edge of York Racecourse. We crossed the finish line together and were pleased with a 1hr 02 mins and 43 seconds.
The goody bag was decent with a medal, a carob bar, packed of crisps, bottle of water and electrolyte tablet. We'd opted to decline a t-shirt as we both have too many, but it was a nice looking navy blue one.
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I had such a lovely time running this morning in the sunshine with Alan and seeing some friendly faces. My time was over 20 minutes slower than it was 7 years ago, but I think I enjoyed this race even more as I'm now much more grateful to be able to do things that 3 years ago seemed like they might never happen again.
