Knysna : T minus 8 days!!!

Yes people – just over a week to go until the Knysna Half! Eeeck!!!

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just completely terrified. If you know me personally, you will know that doing this thing is huge huge huge! It’s my personal Comrades and it has consumed almost all my thoughts for the last three months. Every time I’ve set foot in the road recently, I’ve done it with this goal in mind.

When I decided to enter, the race seemed a very long way away and I had visions of a very different me arriving in the forest on race day. Yes, I know –  I have an overactive imagination! I some how imagined reinventing myself as a lithe, super fit running machine over the course of 12 or so weeks. All with the help of my trusty free half marathon training programme compliments of http://www.runnersworld.co.za and my supercool new Brooks Ghost running shoes.

Well the weeks have come and gone, and although I have sort of stuck to the plan, give or take a few kilometres, I’m not the lithe super fit running machine that I wished I would become. I still trundle along, albeit a bit further and a teensy bit faster than before.

Four months of time trials, and I’ve improved with each run #yayme #running #runwalkforlife #runrevolution #jognation #strava

A photo posted by Hilary Green (@hilgreen) on Jun 25, 2015 at 1:59pm PDT

This training thing has been quite an experience, especially since it’s the middle of winter and early mornings and late afternoons are freaking cold. The recent long runs have been especially challenging.

This last weekend was the longest of my long runs, at just over 19 k’s. It was tough… physically, and even more so, mentally. I was in a big old funk about whether I could actually go that far, how long it would take me and how much of a frustration would my slow pace be to my running mates, Rene and Jackie.

My running mates were awesome. If they were frustrated by my slowness, they didn’t show it once and were just hugely encouraging, all the way. At one point, probably when I was feeling the worst, Rene reminded me that my biggest obstacle was my mind. I do believe that she is right. Had I approached the run with less Grumpy-Pants and more Can-do, the whole experience might have been far more fun. The only thing I was really looking forward to was getting to take this cool photo on the bridge over the N1 highway ( a little bit of Jenty inspiration)

I ran over this cool #bridge this morning #jozi #RunRevolution

A photo posted by Hilary Green (@hilgreen) on Jun 27, 2015 at 3:11am PDT

I spent the next few miles, doing the “I-Think-I-Can” chant in my head and I was absolutely thrilled to get to the end and say “I Could”. We arrived back at our starting point, to cheers from a few members from our branch, hot coffee and the best bacon rolls ever. I spent the rest of the day, hobbling around gingerly, with sore, tired legs and feet, hosting a birthday tea for a special ten year old.

So can I actually run 21.1 Km’s on Saturday, 11 July 2015? 

I-Think-I-Can, provided you don’t stop me at 19 kms and make me restart for those last 2 kms a few minutes later 🙂