I must be crazy

There's got to be something wrong with me that I thought it was a good idea to get up really early on a cold winters Sunday morning, dress up in a Santa outfit drive for an hour out to Glasgow and then run round a loch. Did I mention that it's winter here in Scotland? My hubby was shivering so much it was a real challenge just to get his race number pinned on.

We first saw a couple of Santa's getting out of a car and then soon we saw lots of Santas, reindeers, a few angels, a snowman and lots and lots of tinsel and we knew we were in the right place! I'd got my outfit out of Poundland and I think about half of the other runners did too!

If there is something wrong with me for doing this then I think it might be some kind of epidemic! There were 446 runners that took part and the majority of them were dressed up.

I entered this race to give myself a prod. My running has been irregular at best and although my times have been improving for both the mile and the 5k, I'm still building up to running without the need for walk breaks. I'm a work in progress.

This race was organised by the lovely people at JogScotland. Their races always pull a varied crowd from the serious club runners to the beginners still building on their walking programmes. This makes a good race for beginners because there will always be lots of other people jogging and walking too. So whilst I wasn't as prepared as I have been in the past when I race, I really enjoyed it and realised how much I miss racing.

Another good thing about this race is that it had chip timing. As a beginner runner who is still at the jog/walk level, I would never position myself close to the start line as that's for the more serious and competent runners. If I did that, I would just be in everyones way and besides, it's a bit demoralising being overtaken by hundreds of people! I find it much better to be closer to the back with others that have a similar pace. This often means that it takes some time to get over the start line. In this race, it took 1 minute for me to cross the start line. Those 60 seconds can make a big difference to how you feel about your performance.

So I thought it would be a good idea to enter another one in 4 weeks, same distance but this time with a rather humongous hill.

For anyone interested, I ran the JogScotland Christmas Cracker 5k in Strathclyde Country Park in a time of 35:29 – like I said, a work in progress!