Pencarrow Lighthouse Fun Run

So, no breakfast in bed for Mother's Day, I was up before 6.00am, waking Cam, Rhiannon and Charlotte and getting them going at about 6.15am, and we left at 6.45am ... I'm always so scared of arriving too late, and I was very conscious that we were all going to be late entries (as in I hadn't entered us - I wasn't sure how I'd feel about running 10km after running a marathon the week before!).

We arrived in Eastbourne just before 8am - the nice entry people only charged us one late entry fee (*phew* that was a saving of $30!!), entered myself into the 10km and Cam and the girls into the 5km.

We toilet stopped, sat in the car for a while, put our numbers on and then went and stood in the light rain waiting for the start. The 10km left at 9.00am, the 5km at 9.10am - by my calculations, the girls would take about 35-40min so I expected them to finish about 10min before me. Cameron is a speed demon, so he'd be there to wait for the girls at the finish. I instructed them to make sure Cam started in the front and the girls towards the back, and I went to line up for my start.

I tried to put myself in the "frontish" part but STILL ended up weaving through walkers and slower people, so frustrating, why don't they put themselves in the right place? There were only 108 runners/walkers so it shouldn't have been a problem ;) Anyway, off I went, and first thing I noticed is my legs felt great! No stiffness, soreness or anything ... yay! I tried to keep to about 5:30/km, I wasn't sure how much tiredness I'd feel later and didn't want to overdo it.

At about 3km I started catching this tall guy, now I'd just read the day before about how much men hate being passed by women, and boy was this a classic example, I started passing him and he suddenly SPRINTED away from me, I just let him go and figured I'd catch him later - I'm more than happy to run my own race, I could see it had hurt him though, his head was up gasping for air ... silly man LOL - about 4km I was slowly gaining on him again, and guess what? Got to passing him and he stuck beside me, until I realised I'd pushed my pace to about 5:10/km and I didn't really want to do that so I let him go ahead ... and what do you know? It only took about another half km before I caught him again and passed him again.

I had a quick gulp of water at the 5km turnaround and carried on, I picked up my pace pretty naturally through the last 5km. For some really dumb reason I thought my 10k PB was 56:20, and I also thought that if I kept 5:30/km that would be 55min, so as I got to 5:25/km I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I never look at the total time when I'm running, I usually know by my pace if I'm on track or not!

About 3-400m to the finish guess who I came across walking? My two girls ... eh-oh. The deal was that Rhiannon (11yo) would run with Charlotte to the halfway turnaround point, then Charlotte would let her go - Rhiannon wanted to run the whole thing, Charlotte was doing the younger sister "I'm scared, i want Rhiannon to run with me" act ... so that was the deal we made. As I passed them and cheered them on Rhiannon was doing a major dramatic eyeroll at me, so I knew Charlotte had had a hissy fit of some sort and persuaded Rhiannon to stay with her ... Rhiannon is such a good older sister. I was the good mother I am, and carried on running ;) I passed Cameron coming to look for them just after that so I knew they were fine.

I glanced at my watch then and saw 53:something and thought - cripes, that is fast! It wasn't until I stopped that I remembered 5:45/km is 57:30, 5:30/km is 55min ... and my previous PB was 54:20 - duh! LOL I finished in 54:13 - so a good PB. I was pretty tired by the end, I think that was a marathon just a week previously showing!

I got to cheer the girls in, Rhiannon came in before Charlotte, Cam had obviously stayed with Charlotte and Rhiannon was released from her big sister duties. Charlotte came in a little while later with Cameron.

I was right about the rolling eyes, Charlotte got the stitch and cried and wouldn't let Rhiannon leave her. I think the next one we do, we will quietly leave Charlotte at home so Rhiannon gets a chance to do it at her own speed in her own time - 8yo (and being particularly nervy at the best of times about new situations) is perhaps too young to expect to run on her own.

So, the official results?

Me:
Official time: 54:13
30/77 Total Finishers
14/44 Females

A whopping nearly 12 minutes off my time (1:05:58) from last year!!!

Cameron:
Official time: 23:07 (and that was with a quick puke halfway)
2/37 Total Finishers
2/6 Male Finishers
(they didn't have age groups - but definitely first in his age group at 30ish? yo man beat him).

Rhiannon and Charlotte:
44:22 and 44:59
33rd and 34th.

We went to the local shopping mall afterwards, wandered around the shops for a while, had some lunch and then went to the prizegiving - where even with FOUR of us there we managed to win no spotprize at all :(

It was a nice day though - and a nice way to spend Mothers Day, running with the kids enthusiastic abut running too!

I went and saw my Mum in the afternoon and then came home and assisted the kids cooking of dinner (Rhiannon made a devine - way too many calories - cheesecake ... yummy).

Oh, and Cam's wee puke stop? He just about always does it at the end of a race - I'm not sure if it is because he is putting absolutely everything into the run, right to that puke threshold point - or whether it is his whole breathing/nose equipment. We are waiting on a specialist appointment for him to have a look at his tonsils, he has, and always has had, terrible breathing problems - at 8yo he got his nose scraped out and adenoids out, but he still struggles to breathe properly - he uses an allergy spray for his nose which definitely helps, but he is also a terrible snorer (so terrible that when he goes away for soccer/cricket tournaments he always gets a room to himself), and I think he needs the tonsils pulled out (the Dr agrees they are VERY big) ... so I don't know if it is "puke threshold" or another aspect of the whole breathing equipment thing - it will be interesting to see what the specialist thinks.

Oh, and another thing with Cam - he ran his school cross country last week and came a disappointingly (for Mr Competitive) 14th - he got tripped towards the end and reckons he would have come 12th if that hadn't happened. But interestingly - it was *only* 3.5km ... I reckon if he'd had another 1.5km to run he would have passed a lot of the kids in front, us "Watsons" are just not genetically made for speed - my whole family is better at endurance, and Cameron definitely has those genes :)