On a warm summer’s day, a few members of the Rocktime team floated the idea of signing up for a 10k run in December in aid of charity.
With naive enthusiasm we selected the Christchurch Christmas Pudding race scheduled for over five months’ time, allowing us plenty of time for training and preparation. The 10k race offers its runners a free Christmas pudding for their efforts, at the end of the race.
After an initial flurry of verbal commitment, the excuses started to come in thick and fast. These ranged from being too busy to train, old injuries, new injuries, it being too hot, not being fit enough, if it rains- I might get my hair wet, conflicts with my Netflix schedule, nothing to wear… you name it, we heard it.
So, the responsibility landed on the following three shoulders:
‘Turbo’ Dave, ‘Iron Man’ Ed and ‘please just make it stop’ Tom.
On a blustery winter’s day in December, the horrifying reality set in. In this moment, I regretted putting in such little effort into training over the past few weeks. I also regretted overindulging in Christmas cheese and crackers the night before. With no target time for me to aim for, I just wanted to see if I could finish it.
We set off together, sticking in our small group of three. There were over 450 runners all packed into the cramped country lanes. There was plenty of opportunity to overtake and progress up the field. Within the first mile and having been overtaken by most of the other runners, I watched my two colleagues cruise off into the distance. Undeterred, I stuck to the task at hand and without the need to walk or call the St Johns ambulance, I staggered to the finish line coughing and wheezing.
With the race done, the free Christmas pudding bagged, we all hobbled off, me vowing never again.
Or until next time.
Although this was a great way to help keep the weight off, the driving force behind the run was to raise money for our chosen charity- cancer research. The uncomfortable truth is that I’m sure we have all been affected directly or indirectly by cancer and doing any small bit to help fund research is time well spent. Our just giving page has now reached over £250 in donations which makes the effort well worth it. If you'd like to donate, please follow this link.
