Grab the Unexpected Opportunities... But Tie Your Shoelaces First!

Life is weird... One day you can be sitting at work just fixing bugs as usual and then you get the phone call that every parent dreads: "Your son has had a bad fall and he's on his way to hospital." The next minute you're being told that your two year old needs surgery and it has to be done under general anaesthetic.

Then the very next day (three stitches and a fat lip later, he's fine) you can feel great for no reason whatsoever, hit the gym and smash through all personal records.

In January I started incorporating a little running into my cardio and at the beginning of February, out of nowhere I got on the treadmill and managed to run for a continuous 20 minutes when I'd previously only been doing 3 minutes consistently. That day I was so inspired that I signed up for Race For Life, a women's only 5k race to raise money for Cancer Research.

Since then I've obviously been featuring running in my training a lot more. I have focussed on time rather than speed. My standard workout is a three minute walk to warmup followed by 3 blocks of running with two minutes walking after each one. I started out running 4 minute blocks, then 5, 6, 7 and this week I took it to 8.

I only run 3 times a week so I add on the minute to one block per day so today was my day to do 3 x 8. I was in my 10th minute about to slow down to the walk and I thought to myself, "I feel good today, I could do another endurance test. I wonder if I could do a full 3k continuously?" You know how you have a dialogue with yourself in your mind. "No, no, I'm not in the mood, I don't want to feel that pain". "But there will be pain any time I do it, today is a good day, I can take it." All this only took a moment in my head but before I knew it I'd passed the 11 minute mark and I was on my way.

Today would be the day I set another record for myself.

So, there I am pounding away on the treadmill and I realised that this time it's not about time, its distance. Consciously I thought to myself that I didn't really want to run 3k, I wanted to run 4. But subconsciously I knew that even that was a lie. I wanted nothing less than 5k. So I started to push up the speed. I usually run at a very slow 7.2 but I gradually pushed it up to 7.8. I didn't stay there for long and settled down to a fairly comfortable 7.5.

Then in the 17th minute disaster struck. I heard the familiar noise of my shoe laces coming undone and smacking onto the treadmill. I still don't have proper running shoes and that's fast becoming a priority. I hadn't tightened them before I started. I carried on for a bit longer hoping they were just a bit loose but nope, after another 30 seconds or so they were completely undone and I had to stop. I hit the emergency stop and tied them up as quick as I could and pushed the speed straight back up again. I stopped for no more than 30 seconds but I felt like a failure.

I beat myself up about this for several minutes. How I could I count my efforts when I'd stopped in between? How could I have been so stupid not to check them? I continued berating myself for quite some time that I hadn't noticed that I had just whizzed past my previous 20 minute record!

That changed my state a bit! I realised how much easier it was this time than just 7 weeks earlier and that the 5k was really in my grasp. 4k came and went and I absolutely knew my goal would be achieved. The only real question was how long would it take?

42 minutes and 5 seconds! However, that unfortunately includes the 3 minute warmup walk, as does the 5k distance. Ideally I would reset the machine after the warmup but both times I have done this I didn't know I was going to do it until I had been going for some time.

Sometimes you gotta just grab the opportunities when they hit you even if conditions aren't perfect. The feeling I got when I saw 5k on the distance meter is amazing. I think it was even better than last time because I knew I could have done more. But I was already late for work so I thought I'd better stop :-)