Mo Running 2018 review

At the end of November, I ran in the Mo running event in Stormont in Belfast with Victoria. It was great to support such a good cause! Have a little read about how it went for me!

The training that never was

So my training was meant to be very in depth and have lots of workouts and runs for the entire month. What ended up happening was a couple of gym workouts and one or two runs and no runs until for at least a week leading up to the race. Except for a 5k run on the same course so we could do a bit of scouting it was safe to say that I was not prepared for this race. I was dreading the 10k and as time got closer and closer that dread grew and grew.

 

I really wanted this to be the kick off to my training for 2019 and it didn’t happen and I am quite disappointed about that. But I feel after a week of mulling it over, maybe it was for the best. The back end of 2018 running wise has been a bit of a disaster and maybe now (other than the odd little race scattered about the month) I can just focus on training. I have a few marathons on the horizon in the Spring and I want to be as prepared as I can now for it.

Stormont Park Run

The day before we scouted the course as neither of us have really run around Stormont. Well, I had run for 5 hours up and down the big hill and another race that involved the hill, but not the actual grounds of the estate. I knew the Park run was taking in some of the course and I think Victoria suggested we go there the day before and have a run around to see what it is like. I happily agreed and off we went.

Sadly for us, being out of running practice cost us a little bit and we struggled more than we would have liked. It got to the point where Victoria actually hurt her foot and that threw a lot of the plans for tomorrow out of the window. I immediately thought that if it was sore tomorrow then we would relegate ourselves down to the 5k to limit the damage as I knew Victoria would still want to run the race and I wanted to make sure she was alright.

Race Day

The morning of the race came and I knew she was hurting and she knew she was hurting, so we accepted the downgrade and received out numbers and headbands and stretched it out for a bit. There was a fun little warm-up before the race that for some reason was held at the bottom of a muddy hill. It was grand, but I think it would have been better on a firmer surface.

 

We get to the start and we have to look up towards Stormont and it is all fairly easy, we weren’t going for a personal best time due to me being out of form and Victoria carrying a knock, so we go along happily. The 10km runners were meant to start 10 or 15 minutes after the 5km runners so that there was a sizeable gap before people could get caught up around the narrow sections and I think because we were running late that this was cut to 5 minutes. So within the first 2 km, we were looking behind us to make sure we weren’t disrupting the front runners! It wasn’t ideal, but there isn’t much that can be done about that! Next time we will just have to be a lot faster!

We are running comfortably and I am happy, then we come to the hills on the left-hand side of the grounds and things change, people start running slower and gasps appear through the trees. I am not 100% sure on this, but I think some people didn’t know how undulating the course was going to be and seeing as we were running on the XC portion of the grounds. I was enjoying it but I saw that others weren’t.

When Victoria and I reached 4km she commented that she was happy that we didn’t run the 10 as she wasn’t sure if she could do that middle part twice. It takes a little practice to get used to that type of terrain, but she was storming up those hills and literally stopped running once for 2 seconds at the very top of a hill, but she kept going. I was quite proud of her for keeping at it and not letting it affect her mentally. We get to the finish and she asks when should we kick on, I pace her a bit further up to make sure the girl behind us can’t catch us and then suddenly Victoria bolts for the finish and finishes in front of me!! Very rude!

 

Overall thoughts

It was a great race and I very much enjoyed it! I can’t wait to return next year and if it is on the same course I know I will get a better time! If you are in the UK look out for the races in November 2019 as they are great fun!

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