La distance ne compte pas

- Distance doesn't matter -

Today I ran a 10K race. And I almost died.

This morning's race wasn't AT ALL like that other 10K I ran a year and a half ago. This was very different on several levels, a sort of wake-up call if you like.

For one thing nobody was dressed as Santa.

For another, running this thing blasted through whatever denial walls I'd set up in my head and cruelly reminded me just how unfit I've become since the previous race. I hadn't trained at all for this event (not even a quick stroll around the park), and quite frankly I haven't set foot at the gym since last Feb. This obviously led to me making the worst time ever on a 10K (1h17m). To add insult to injury, I had to walk several times throughout the course, something I'd always promised myself I would never do no matter how tired I became while running a race. :(

The other thing that was so different from my previous experience, is that this was a race for charity. I don't know how it is in your country but in Mexico or France charity unfortunately doesn't seem to be a big thing. Basically if you wish to volunteer or raise awareness on any given issue, you have to go out there and look for the organizations involved in these subjects yourself. No one is going to go ahead and sign you up without you even knowing about it!!

In the UK the mentality is totally different. You don't have to go out there and look for ways to get involved, they come to you. The possibilities for volunteering your time and money seem to be endless in this country. As an example, my Company gives every employee 2 days off per year for volunteer work and there is always ongoing events to raise money, be it Movember, dress-down Fridays, staff parties where all proceeds go to charity, or in this case, the Macmillan 10K Fun Race.

Macmillan raises money for Cancer Research and this 10K was one of the many initiatives organized towards that goal. As Macmillan is my company's selected charity of the year, several people from work signed up to run this race and when my friends saw that I was dragging my feet at signing up too (because of afore mentioned lack of training), they went ahead and signed me up for it anyway!! :)

So anyway, that's how I found myself at 9am in Regent's Park standing at the start line of a 10K. The cool thing was that although there wasn't a lot of runners (300 at the most) it seems we did manage to raise some serious dough... according to the announcer right before the start of the race, my fellow charity runners and myself managed to raise a little over 78,000 £ which sounds like a heck of a lot of money !!! Yay for us !!

And then the race started.

Of course by Km2 I was slagging behind and waved to my friends to go on without me. With a wave of regret and frustration I resigned myself to keeping a pace no faster than a toddler's baby steps if I wanted to make it to the finish line. At least I was technically not walking....yet.

And that's when I started to notice it. The numbers. Most of the runners around me had written notes on their numbers saying who they were running for. As runner after runner passed me on the road I suddenly started to be aware of all those "For Grandma" or "for my dear Lizzie" or "in memory of Donald". Every single one was hand written, some decorated with glitter or feathers, some with printed pictures of smiling loved ones.... it hit me how these people were probably not even thinking about their fitness condition or worried about in what time they were going to make it to the finish line like I was. They were running for someone they loved. Someone they'd lost.

I was also immediately aware of another thing: the most repeated written phrase on those numbers was "For Dad".

Of course this made me think of my own dad. Although he didn't pass away from Cancer per se, I've always associated the disease to be the root of all his health problems and the ultimate thing to blame for him having left us so young. I suddenly wished I had written down in my own number "por mi padre" or simply his name.

I don't know how much that thought helped me make it to the finish line or even if in the grand scheme of things it matters much, but I do know that this race, however hard, however grueling, however disappointing, was the most rewarding race I've yet to run.

Photo: "The running gals" by Hubby

Fned.