Therwil Crossrun 10 km
I’ve been looking forward to this race for long time, because it was a trail run through the forest. I was really hoping for a fast time, I thought I could significantly improve my time from the Birslauf where I didn’t push too hard at all. However, the day before the run, I was feeling so under-the-weather with a cold that I wasn’t sure whether I would even be able to run at all, and spent the afternoon lying around in bed. The husband and the daughter were still not 100% either, so I thought I may have to go alone which kind of scared me a little. By Sunday morning we were all well enough to head out.
I hadn’t registered before the race, and there was a long wait to get a number. Then the “few hundred metres” walk to the start turned out to be a good kilometer, all up a fairly steep hill. Walking this with a five-year-old was quite a chore and I wasn’t impressed. It was a muggy day, and there was no water provided at the start - if I’d left my bag down at the cloakroom (which is what I would have done if I’d been alone), and not had any water with me, I would have been cross and thirsty before the race even begun. There were no water stations on the run either, which I think is hard-going on a 10 km which will take plenty of people more than an hour to complete. But I had already experienced this at the Birslauf so I was expecting it and had hydrated to the max (over-hydrated it turned out!)
Once the race set off, I forgot about being hot and cross and tried to enjoy it. I went off hard, because I wanted to beat a) my PB and b) a colleague from work who was also running. I’ve run a few races in my time, but this was the first time I ever actually wanted to “race” as opposed to just make it all the way. And it was hard. My legs felt heavy and tired from the moment I set off, as if I had spent the previous night out drinking, and I never really got into my groove.
When I reached 5km (after what felt like an ETERNITY) I checked my watch, it said 11.28 am, and I really thought my chance of a PB was gone. I tried to calculate: At the start, we were sent off in waves (by start number), one minute apart. The first wave had gone off at exactly 11, and I was in the third wave. So, 11:02. So 11.28 meant 26 minutes, right? But what if my watch was synchronized with the starter’s watch? I thought I remembered checking as I crossed the line and seeing my watch say 11.01. So that meant 27 minutes. 27 minutes times 2, that’s 54 minutes, which is what I needed for my PB. So, I had to keep going at exactly the same pace, and I’d make it, but I couldn’t slow down at all. All this took about a kilometer to think about because my brain doesn’t work that well when I’m trying to run fast, not fall over and breathe, all at the same time. I realized that I need to learn to use the stopwatch on my fancy watch, or get a Garmin (in my dreams).
So I just had to keep going, keep pushing, however much I wanted to slow down and just enjoy the forest. I hate being passed and I hate being slow and I wanted to put in good performance.
Just before the 7 km mark, the course passed right next to the eventual finish, and there were the husband and the daughter. How wonderful it is to see people you know cheering you on when you’ve been running alone. It lifts my spirits so much and I gave them such a big smile and a wave and it spurred me on to kick out a bit more speed for a while. By now I was just counting down the kilometers and wanting to be done. I passed the 8 km marker at 11.44 on my watch, and by now was far too exhausted to try all that calculating again. The last km was absolute hell. In every race I’ve run before I’ve been able to put on a good finishing spurt, but not this time. I was spent, I had nothing left. I just had to keep moving my legs to the finish line and I just couldn’t go any faster, no matter what the clock said.
The route was really a nice one, but those forest trails are tiring, because you have to watch your footing every single step. It was an undulating course - I wouldn’t go so far as to call it hilly after the monster I ran in Lupsingen a few weeks ago. But I’m not sure the organizers had thought this through very well. First of all there was the walk to the start, and then the finish was right in the middle of the forest, which led to many people walking back along the race route to get to the village/cloakroom/tram station. It’s hideous, in the last 1 to 2 km of a run, to have to dodge people who have already finished their run, coming back towards you. Most of them, of course, kept out of the way, but there are always some selfish assholes who only know that they’ve finished and don’t think of anyone else and stop to talk to their friends or wander happily down the middle of the damn track. Not nice, not polite and stupid organization. In fact, there was a shorter, non-routey way back, but it wasn’t signposted and people who don’t know the area wouldn’t have thought to go that way. After the race we had to walk all the way back down that hill again to the tram stop, which took hours because the daughter was tired and hungry and didn’t want to walk. I had to carry her for a bit, which did not please my legs at all.
There was no post-race high after this race, I just felt tired and hot and exhausted. And a little like I had failed, because I had really wanted to hammer it and I just couldn’t. The photos that my husband took of me during the race just make me look like a small juggernaut, which didn’t make me feel too good either (yeah, I'll post them once I've uploaded them!!) So, I was pretty surprised when I checked the chip times online to find that I HAD beaten my PB, with a time of 54.36, and that I had come 8th out of 20 in my age group. I am getting faster, slowly but surely, but did it really have to hurt that much for a 41 second improvement???
Speed Kills
I am not even going to talk about today’s run. It was one of those runs that makes you want to hang up your running shoes for good. I cried. I told myself to HTFU but I still cried. I ran with people from work and they dropped me like I wasn’t even frikkin moving. Yeah, luckily they were way too far ahead of me to see that I cried. Why am I so stupidly competitive? Why are they?? It totally, utterly sucked.
2 months to go
Yesterday marked exactly 2 months to go until my triathlon. I still don’t have a road bike, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get one. I cannot swim more that 100 m crawl (if I’m lucky) without having to rest. I am not training enough, especially not swimming because, as well as involving somehow getting to a pool when it's actually open, it’s just torture for me. I can’t afford a bike, I can’t afford swimming lessons, and work and family-life are just draining ALL my energy right now.
I just don’t want to give up though. There are two things in my life that make me incredibly happy. One is my daughter and the other one is sport. I love to be outdoors, getting down and dirty, in the rain, in the forest, sweating, breathing, pushing myself as hard as I can. Then I feel alive. I didn’t do it for almost 8 years and they were some of the worst years of my life.
It’s hard not having anyone to share this journey back to fitness with and I feel very lonely. My husband is supportive, but only as long as it doesn’t cost anything. The blog world helps a lot, but everyone just seems so much….so much more everything than me. Everyone has a car, a bike, a wetsuit, a Garmin, some even have a coach. My colleague here at work is training for a half-ironman and we talk about it sometimes, but her situation is so different from mine - she works part-time, has plenty of money, a car, a friend helping her with swimming. I’m doing this all alone, with a (more-than) full-time job, trying to support my family. My husband has exams almost constantly and when he’s not caught up in studying, he’s playing computer games. I’m lonely and I’m tired.
I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I’ll rant about it again: Switzerland is not a country where there are “have-a-go” or “try-a-tri” triathlons. People here are “Do or do not, there is no try”. They buy the right equipment, they look the part, they have the right body shape and they DO. There are no Athena athletes, no Clydesdales, no women’s only events, no doing events for charity, no dressing up as a giant banana. These things are SERIOUS. The times from the Züri tri last year are FAST and I am not.
I keep asking myself why I am doing this, why don’t I just quit and try again next year. I could just stick to running this year, run a marathon maybe. Then I go and read someone’s blog, a race report, their description of becoming an ironman or their first triathlon and I WANT IT SO BAD. I want this. I’m not a person who quits because something is a challenge. Oh, I quit very easily when something bores me, for sure, but not because something’s a challenge. I love the challenge of triathlon, just as I love the challenge of running faster.
I love Basel but sometimes being an expat is the pits. I miss my old friends so much, the ones who really “got me”. It’s been years since I’ve had that kind of companionship. I miss my family. I miss knowing how things work and being able to communicate with everyone. I have a few friends here, but there is no one I could call when I’m down, no one to give me a hug, and no one who will kick my butt. I need this triathlon to fill the empty hole in my life that aches for something more.
