So how did my half marathon go for the Great East Run 2018 in Ipswich today?
In all honesty, it went as well as I could expect with the amount of training I didn’t manage to do due to various factors. However; running is and always will be a mental sport. The truth is, my mentality and confidence for this race was brutally affected by my lack of training in comparison to previous races and generally where my head has been.
When I got to the top of the hill out of Holywells Park in Ipswich at just about mile 4 I started to panic, everything felt heavy, everything hurt and suddenly everything around me was spinning, my head was shouting at me ‘you can’t do this and you’ve only managed up to 4 miles, what will everyone think’...I was shaking, I was crying and my breathing was all over the place... now I can’t exactly remember what happened next but something clicked, the next part of the road was downhill and my legs broke out into a run again. My head carried on telling me I couldn’t do it until around mile 8/9 and I had a friend running alongside me helping me to fight it, reminding me ‘you can!’. At around mile 9 I gave myself a pep talk, ‘Sabrina Waters doesn’t give up, not now and not ever, she’s stronger than this stupid head talk and she will make it to the end of this race! C’mon Sabs, you can do it!’
And I couldn’t be happier to say that I did make it to the end! I overcame the anxiety, the negative mindset and started to believe I could. Finishing that race has reminded me what I’m capable of when my mind is in the right place. It wasn’t a PB, and though I thought I’d be devastated I feel quite at peace with that because I finished well! And I still love to run 😊
Ttfn;
