Monday 1 October 2007

Great North Run 2007

First of all let me justify - I have ITBS at the moment and therefore I am running and walking events and getting there slowly without agravating my knee.

We started off the morning with an early train from Darlington after a hurried gigantic bowl of cereal and a pint of squash. We arrived into Newcastle with the early morning sun in our eyes and headed for McDonalds since it was the only place to sit down and sort through our running pack, pin our numbers on, pay numerous visits to the toilet, etc

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Having loaded our pockets with Butterscotch and Fig Rolls we made our way up to the start area along with the other 49 998 runners to collect pace bands and load our baggage onto baggage buses. We made our way to the start and were raring to go!

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After hanging around in our start pen for a while listening to the commentary and watching the big screen we warmed up with some dude. We watched the elite wheelchairs, women and men set off and we crossed the start line 20 minutes later. The start of the course was through underpasses and over bridges and the infamous "Oggy oggy oggy" was being yelled in the echoey bits! The Red Arrows followed us closely over the Tyne Bridge and shortly after that, the sun became too much for me and I had to strip!

There were bands playing all around the course, and lovely people cheering along every part of the way. People came out of their houses to watch and were handing out sweets, and oranges and biscuits and ice pops. How fabby!

The most gruelling bit that everyone hates seemed ok, we were well and truly walking by that point and Dom was tempted by my offer of a piggy back, but we were consoled with the fact that we were near the end. We descended down the final downhill stretch, turned the corner and were gutted to see there was another mile to go! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! By that point we were strolling along with our arms around each other, and my hopes of a sub-three hour walking half were out of the window! I think both of our brains had shut down and we were just making it to the finish! We waved to lots of cameras, so we will hopefully have some good publicity shots of me in the DEMAND running vest.

Finally we finished, and collected our goodie bags and celebrated with mince pies overlooking the sea!

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After waiting for hours in the Metro queue without collapsing, we finally made it to Darlington on the train to see Mum, and she bought us life-saving Fish and Chips, which did not dissapoint!

1 comment:

YP said...

I was looking out for you as I didn't think you'd be far away from us - mind you I think you'd have spotted us before I spotted you!