Crunchy ‘Nanas

Yesterday was the Kent Christmas Cracker 5 out at Fowlmead Country Park. The night before, I watched the weather forecast and then went upstairs and pulled out every layer I own that keeps me warm on a run, determined not to let any numbness spoil my fun.

I woke up to the wind howling and the rain hitting the window panes and I added some cold weather wear from Crunchy husband’s drawers to the pile as well.

See me in this picture.

You may not be able to tell, but there are four layers there, two layers on my hands. There was supposed to be another ‘layer’ on my head, but the wind kept blowing the antlers off so they just didn’t happen.  (In the end, I did have two layers on my head when I pulled my hood over my hat.)

And you know what? The rain wasn’t as hard as it had been all night, and only started shooting icy drops the last couple miles of my race. I ended up being nice and toasty. Except for my face. The wind was blowing from the south-ish and it left half of my face frozen. But, you know, I could feel my hands and feet, so it was all good. I did feel kind of wussy - people out there in short sleeves-GAH! - but I don’t care. I am what I am!

So the race went well. It was fun and I ran about 3-5 minutes faster than I planned to. I didn’t really check my paces until mile 3 (after I had stripped off the top layer of woolly gloves) and saw that I was running way too fast, so slowed down a bit for the last two miles. Almost to mile 4, I heard this lady with jingle bells approach from behind, but she never quite passed me. I have to say, I really wouldn’t have minded if she did, but since she didn’t, I wasn’t really up for being passed on the sprint into the finish, so I got my game on for the last bit and was thankful for the bells because it was an easy way to tell how close or far she was to me.

In the end, I was really pleased with my race.

Race stats:

Distance: 5 miles
Time: 44:20
Pace: 8:52 min/mile

This entry was posted on Sunday, 14th December 2008 at  13:10 and is filed under Race reports. You can follow responses to this entry using the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.