02. Train for and complete a 10k run

A while ago, I blogged about training for a 5k run. But this last summer, I actually ran a 10k race in the Ottawa race weekend (without cheating).

The first thing I needed for training was new shoes! My old ones were about 3 years old and falling apart, so this meant one thing - shopping! The shoes I bought have mesh on them so things are quite airy when a gust of wind comes my way.

Training for this was another story. I decided to use my lunch break at work to train, and methodically used googlemaps to plot out my training circuit (during non-work hours of course), which ended up being 4.8km on googlemaps (plus a nice hill/shortcut that google's system did not recognize). And, because my lunch is only 30 minutes (plus 15 mins since I get in early), I had plenty of motivation to get back on time (or get fired..).

Considering that a few years ago, 5k was hard for me, my training went pretty well, except for my first day. As I have blogged about many times before, I am HORRIBLE with directions. It was all going fine until I came to a road that I couldn't remember if I was supposed to go left or right at (as usual, in doubt, I went left). What saved me was good-ol OC transpo. I used one of their handy bus-stop maps to locate myself and get back to work after a solid 38 minute run.

The race weekend went much better for me, since I had over 10,000 running buddies to follow and didn't have to worry about directions (huge arrows mapping the route ) and the fact that I followed a lovely man dressed in a bunny outfit. I finished the race in 1:06.12 and am planning on getting to 1:00 next year!