Ah! After the Grand Haven trip, the group decided to run a 10K at the Canton Liberty Run. The decision to run a 10K without any preparation was a daunting one and I wasn’t sure whether my body was ready to take in this much effort. But, as most of the group was participating in the 10K event, I decided to join them and see what lies ahead of me.
I picked up the Bibs and T-shirts for everyone prior to the day of the event, so that they don’t have to. I was all excited to run a 10K, which was probably the longest distance I was going to run in a long time. To prepare for the run, the only thing I did was to watch a few YouTube videos and walk a little bit. Apart from that, I didn’t spend much time actually running and preparing for the event.
On the day of the event, we all arrived at the venue and were all ready to run. I remember they had put the sections for all the runners based on their pace. Knowing that I hadn’t run in a long time and how slow I would be during the actual race, I decided to start at the 12′ pace mark. I thought that was a good place to start my run as I didn’t want to bump into other runners and cause any injuries to anyone.
The run started normally. I knew how fast or slow I should run, since the distance was 6.2 miles long. I started very slowly, moving in close quarters with the fellow runners. After we crossed a couple blocks, then I started to see the crowd spreading a little bit. This spread of the crowd gave me some room to pace my run accordingly.
I remember it was around 1-mile mark when I started realizing how long the 10K distance is. Fortunately, the race coordinators had setup the hydration stations after every miles, which helped me stay motivated and energetic throughout the race. Looking at the other runners, I felt I should run faster too, but, couldn’t as I didn’t want to tire myself out.
I kept looking at the next milestone throughout the race. I knew if I just thought about the milestones, the race will not be over quickly, so I started humming songs and looking at other runners and people who were cheering us on from the sidelines. It made the time and distance went by quickly than I expected.
I didn’t realize that I was near the finish line until I saw the milestone marking the 6 mile distance. This meant that the finish line was just 0.2 miles away. When I learnt this, I was just waiting for the finish line to appear. Unfortunately, this 0.2 miles distance seemed so far away to me. I was trying so hard to reach the finish line, but it seemed so away from me, and I had a hard time to cover that distance. Finally, after almost a long time, I could cross the finish line & the feeling was amazingly awesome.
The official photographer from the Canton Liberty Run captured a few clicks of me crossing the finish line. My friends were across the finish the line and I was the fourth one to finish the race. Though, I would have loved finishing the race faster and quicker, but was happy with the effort that I put in and saw myself crossing the finish line. It was an amazing feeling just to cross the finish line and capture the distance such as 10K. It was a big deal and something that I cherished a lot.
Next stop: Ford Team outing at Detroit, MI, USA.
stochasticity 