10k: pwned!

Today I ran the 10k Great Run here in Manchester. My goal was to run it in under an hour and guess what? I did it! Official proof follows:

Ok, so it's not official. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Not bad for 10 days training, huh? Actually, when I say 10 days training I really mean 4 which is the number of runs I did before the big day. The runs where: 3k, 5.3k, 10k (on treadmill) and 7.5k respectively.

Despite finishing within the hour I actually couldn't manage to do it all in one go. By the 7th km I had to walk for maybe 400m. Dunno what happened, the legs were just asking for a rest. After that, I resumed the running only to find out that my left knee had other plans. Apparently it didn't like the cooling down at all and wasn't quite ready to let me run again so I had to walk for another bit. When I saw the 8k marker I decided my knee would have to put up or shut up, besides, I knew that if it just warmed up again it would be fine. The last 2k were a struggle but I didn't stop again til the end. When I saw there were 200m left, my watch was marking 59:00 so I had to change gears and run a little bit faster to finally finish in 59:58. That was a close one, eh?

When I finished I finally started to feel all the cold caused by the rain that fell during most of the race and the pain in my knee flared up a bit. I guess (hope) it'll go back to normal after some days' rest. The moral of the story is that next time I should start training way before than this year to avoid these kind of problems.

I leave you with some pretty pics:

Before the race
From left to right: Sodel, Edgar, Alex, Victor

After the race; soaked with rain and sweat

With the medals!

p.s. The guy who won it finished in 27 minutes. Next year, when I take performance enhancing drugs I'm gonna pwn the bastard!!! :P