Of Truck Parades and 10Ks

This weekend included one of my favourite events of the Christmas season. In fact, it always manages to turn me from a bah humbug type mood into a weepy people-are-so-wonderful-and-kind kind of mood; the Island Equipment Owners Association Lighted Truck Parade.

This thing is awesome and involves I don't know how many trucks and busses and big big vehicles all lit up with lights and displays and horns a honking and people a waving and Santas smiling and it's all for charity and fun and I have never gone to one of these parades and not cried at how awesome people can be and how much we all just want to share our joy and happiness with each other.

I love the truck parade, and this year's was no exception.

I also ran this weekend.

And, sure, I know I ran last weekend and the weekend before that (repeat since September) but this time?

I ran 10 K.

(Insert photo of me grinning big here)

At the end of this post, I said "If you'd told me in January I'd be participating in a 10k in April and signing up for a learn to run clinic in September I would have told you there was no way I'd be able to do it. But I have and I did and I am and I can't help but wonder what awesome things I might challenge myself to do next."

We can add to that if you told me in January I'd be running a 10K at the end of the year I would have told you you were crazy and that there was no way, no WAY that would happen, maybe in a couple of years. In fact, I seem to remember thinking to myself "maybe in a couple of years I'll try running in the TC 10K" and in the post where I talked about my awesome experience of walking in the TC 10K this year I actually said "I already have plans to do it again next year and either walk faster or try to jog a bit in there somewhere to see how much faster I can do it."

Either walk faster to try to jog a bit in there.

Well, I blew that idea out of the water didn't I?

For those of you who're interested in this process, I stuck to the runs we ended our clinic with which were ten and ones, or in non-insane terms, running (at your own pace/speed/comfort level) for ten minutes and then walking for one minute. Rinse and repeat.

A couple of times I took a little bit of a longer walk break and there were some hilly hills and one of them had me at a walk, but I'd estimate I didn't walk more than ten minutes of the entire race.

I was worried that I'd be slow. Slow enough that everyone would have left, or slow enough that I'd be much much slower than the speed I walked the TC 10K at. I'd worked out that since on my clinic nights we run for an hour and I've mapped the route out at about 5K, the 10K would take me two. but I surprised myself greatly by beating that time and finishing much much much faster than the two hours I'd guessed at.

It's kind of blowing my mind how much faster I was actually.

But more than that, it's the fact that I wanted to do it, I signed up for it, I got someone to come with me (that was my last excuse to not do it) and I finished it. Didn't give up. (Even when I really thought that'd be more fun.) I ran a 10K you guys. Me.

I did that.