Victory is mine!

On 6th May 1954 Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile. On 14th April 2002 Paula Radcliffe won the London Marathon at her first attempt at the distance. On 28th August 2004 Kelly Holmes won her second gold medal at the Athens Olympics. (Wikipedia has all sorts of uses!)

Well you can add to these great athletic achievements 31st January 2006 because that is the date that I completed the lake run! Oh yes! Congratulatory emails and comments are now being received! Any requests to run part of the relay in the marathon are being flatly refused however.

I officially set the goal of running the lake on my first night here, I wanted to get it done by the time I finished here. When I came back from Christmas I realised that I really didn’t want to try and do it in the height of summer so I had the unofficial goal of doing it before I go to Korea in March but I didn’t really expect to get it done before the end of the month.

Despite basking in my glory I don’t think there will be any call up to represent NI in the Commonwealth Games. It was probably the slowest anyone has ever run the lake in its history. You need to understand how much I hate running. Like really really hate it. When I used to go to gym I would only ever go on the treadmill if everything, and I mean everything else was being used. This may be as a result of once falling off a treadmill. I was reaching for my water which was on a window sill beside me, although I think this excuse is now falling on deaf ears (or indeed blind eyes) as you are now laughing hysterically at the fact that I fell off and am now admitting it. I am nothing if not honest.

Anyway, unless there was nothing else free I would only run for three minutes. THREE MINUTES!! Last night I ran three miles. That might not sound a lot to you and it’s probably not as far as you thought given how much I have gone on about it but let me just reiterate, I hate running. I fell off a treadmill. I only ran for three minutes once in a blue moon. Running three miles is a fair achievement for me.

Having achieved my goal I’m not really sure if I’ll continue on with running. A large part of me thinks I should, but I think that’s probably still the endorphins talking. (Turns out Always were right, exercise does make you make happier! Who knew?!) Maybe I just won’t be so gung-ho about running the whole thing. Running the lake is free and I’m all for that.

The hardest bit of the whole thing comes at the very end with the short cut up to my house. It’s a hewge hill which if wasn’t much shorter to go up it I wouldn’t. As it comes at the end and isn’t technically part of the lake I don’t, and will never try to run up it. Even Paula herself wouldn’t.


It’s the sort of hill that makes you wish it snowed every day just so you could go sliding down it. This picture was taken going down it in the car and when you are at the top it’s like you’re at the top of the Freefall in Indianaland. There’s no way I was running up that.

Last night I discovered the trick. It’s not to stop. It was the first night I actually set out with the goal of running the whole thing, all the other times were just in preparation. As I set out I found it hard to believe that I would still be running as I looked to the other side of the lake. But so long as I didn’t think about the seemingly mammoth task in hand and just concentrated on the next step it was ok. There’s a deeper issue there which maybe if I wasn’t so tired I might try and extract a bit further but no doubt you can see it for yourself. But basically deal with the other side of the lake when you get to it. And remember the trick is not to stop.