Two sisters and a bottle of wine…
Hilversum, Christmas Eve 2017, my parents’ house. Presents were unpacked, all 3 grandkids spoiled rotten, everybody as stuffed with food as the turkey we had just eaten was when it went into the oven that morning. And wine. Plenty of wine. Add 2 sisters and you’ve got a crazy idea: hey, let’s run the 5km Yakult Ladies Run, part of the
Hilversum City Run, next April! No more than 10 minutes later we had both signed up and toasted to our upcoming success.
The next morning we went for a little run around the old neighborhood. Okay, so run was probably a bit of a big word. Let’s call it an interval training. IN any case, we we running and walking and talking and laughing about our crazy plan. Neither of us was even close to 5k…
Hitting that 5k goal
For me, after having just picked up running (again) in September, my first distance goal was 5km and the Yakult Ladies Run was the perfect motivation to work towards reaching that goal. Surprisingly enough, I managed to run 5km on December 28th! Only to get no further than 2.5 on the 31st.
Running for fun?
In the meantime silly me had seen an ad for the
Decathlon 5k Fun Run by Night on January 6th and of course I had signed up, so I needed to step up my game a bit. On January 4th I went running again, reaching a little over 4k. 2 days later I went to the Decathlon, slapped a truckload of lights on my body and ran that 5k without any problems. Except for the parking garage. That thing was no fun!
Yakult Ladies Run 2018
April 15 2018: the day of the race. Just the evening before my sister had decided to run it after all, despite not having trained for it due to a multitude of reasons and circumstances. But hey, she’d payed for the race and a t-shirt and she wanted the darned goodie bag too! I wasn’t feeling all too secure about the distance either. I had just had another bad flu, for the second time already this year, so I hadn’t run as often or as far as I had wanted to.
Running 5k in the sun
The race started out pretty well actually. The sun was shining, weather and mood were great and I was feeling pumped to run. About halfway through things got a bit rough. We had just run up a very long slope, temperatures were rising and the sun was starting to get a lot stronger. Where my sister was, I had no idea. And then I saw my best friend, her husband and their son by the side of the road, waiting to see me. I waved and yelled and they nearly missed me running past them, hahaha!
Dips and a finish
Around the 3.5k my legs gave out and I had to walk for a bit. But with all those runners everywhere I couldn’t give up. Not now, not yet. So within 30 seconds I was running again. That turned out to be a bit too soon, so at 4k I had to walk another bit. But again, this lasted no longer than 30-45 seconds.
I ran, waved to my parents, nieces and son and crossed that finish line in a little under 35 minutes. About 10 minutes later I cheered my sister on as she ran across the finish line. We did it. We had run the 5k Yakult Ladies Run 2018!
Running more races
One thing these runs have taught me is that I love running a race. I may not be the fastest, but it’s just such a great feeling to run among so many people with the same passion! And it’s truly motivating to reach those goals. But reaching a goal also means setting a new one. So my new goals are 7.5k for the
Ladies Run Eindhoven on June 10th and 10k for the evening run during the
Marathon Eindhoven weekend in October.
See you on the starting line!
