A couple of weekends ago, Clare came up for her first visit to see me in Edinburgh. One of the reasons (other than my company of course) was to do the Edinburgh marathon festival 5K on the Saturday morning. She has done the 10k before but I have not been running in ages so we went for the 5K and that was more than enough for me. I meant to do some before this event but that never happened. :/ Not my best move. Thankfully we didn't have to start until 11am so no crazy early starts.
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| pausing while trying to find the starting point |
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| Waiting for the torture to begin. |
We started at pretty much the back of the race. Which was fine with me. I had no intention of racing off. The race is around Arthur's seat in Holyrood park, which is beautiful and a route I have walked many times. So I knew beforehand how big that damn hill is at the start. We walked.
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| At the top. |
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| Thinking. |
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| View over Duddingston loch |
Despite my better judgement here I have added some of the 'race' photos. I actually seem to appear to be running in all of them. I think they were just being kind. They are not the most attractive of photos but frankly I am just glad I finished.
I won't deny our time was pretty rubbish and I came 714 out of 719. Though to be fair, we pretty much started at this position anyway. What I didn't know before I started was that a.) Clare doesn't sweat so I look horrendous in comparison, and b.) for the last 500m there are crowds egging you on, and screaming at you if you slow down or walk. So much peer pressure! I was nearly dead when we finished. But we did get medals, t-shirts, bags, water and some much needed granola bars.
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| Happy. |
After walking back to mine, we chilled out for the afternoon before heading out for well deserved cocktails and dinner.
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| Happy again, post-dinner. |
