why?
Now I think this is probably pushing it, but hey, I can dream. I have done the Great North Run in about two hours, twenty minutes and the Nike 10k in 1 hour and twelve seconds.
Might have to lose the man boobs to achieve this one.
done?
October 2006 - Part Done
On 8 October 2006 the Em Led and I took part in the Nike 10k around Hyde Park in London. It was always going to be a bit of a challenge as we flew back in to London from our two-week honeymoon in America through the night on the 6/7 October and we were quite jet-lagged.
We've done the Nike 10k on two previous occasions and while the Em Led has managed to run it under an hour on both occasions I had not been as successful, running in 1 hour, 0 minutes and 12 seconds and 1 hour 3 minutes.
The Nike 10k is a funny race really. The Great North Run is wonderful as you get a complete and utter cross section of society. Young, old, black, white, orange (I saw a bunch of Ompah Lumpas the year before last), fat, thin, professional runners, first time runners, walkers, pantomine horses, Jimmy Saville (Em Led ran past him), grannies and lots of others. Everyone cheers each other on and the atmosphere is fantastic. The Nike 10k, although not a bad race by any means, has a very different feeling.
The Nike run seems to mainly be made up of 18 to 24 year olds, who are very good looking, probably work somewhere called Anderson Hofflar, Grason Hodges, Typeman Radish, Yoffson Mellows or Brice Brice and Symth-Piddley and get their lunch from Pret-A-Manager. They seem to be the type of people that know what they are doing in Starbucks (unlike me, as I get horribly confused and paniced as the four people who all seem to be serving me shout our various options that I don't understand and I end up asking for tea as it is less chaotic), use the word 'ciao' and probably have ISAs. They have all the latest ipods, trainers, isotonic hairbands and very fancy looking watches with GPS. But all this is acceptable. The annoying thing is that these bastards look good when they run. The Em Led and I turn in to sweaty, red and smelly individuals the minute we start, whilst the Nike 10k crowd seem to avoid this somehow. The women taking part invariably look like this:
Other than maybe having slightly bigger shorts, that photo is pretty accurate. I, on the other hand, look like this when I'm all set for a run:
Like all proper men I look like a complete twat in a hat and shorts. If you are a man and you look good in a hat or a pair of shorts you are either a women or you run in the Nike 10k.
Anyway, although I don't exactly look the part I didn't do too badly in this year's race and managed to finish in just over 57 minutes. Which is not bad by my own standards. The average time was just over 56 minutes. Unfortunately Em Led had to pull out half way through as she brought the wrong shoes (but she more than made up for it by doing a half marathon a week later in her best ever time).
Just the half marathon in less than two hours now. Oh well.
