Hardlopen met toewijding

After a bad night of sleep, I woke up and the first thing that went through my mind was: “I hope the weather is nice”. I looked outside and could not be more disappointed since it was raining very hard. After staring at the rain pouring down my window, I decided to go get myself some new running gear and went to the shops to treat myself to a nice new pair of shorts and running pants because I thought if I’m going to lose, I might as well lose in style.

To be honest, I was not so sure about myself because I got in the competition due to my colleague Mieke getting injured and she asked me to stand in for her. This was approximately two weeks before the competition and because of the short notice, combined with the fact that I am a bulky powerlifter who mainly lifts heavy weights, it was very challenging for me to take over her place. I had trained four times with an average of 30 minutes to complete 5k, which made me a bit nervous since my time influences our team result.

Later on, when I got dressed in my running gear (listening to some up-tempo music and feeling the excitement of my first running competition) I really got pumped up to perform and entered my “zone”. During the run I was questioning myself, why am I choosing to endure the torture of a 5k run, on my Saturday afternoon, when I could be at home resting for the weekend. But I shook it off and told the little voice inside my head to shut up because I did not want give up. I also wanted to show my team that they can rely on me. I felt motivated when they were cheering for me and it pushed me to run faster than ever.
 

When it was all said and done, I was not sure how I performed but I did know that I had run faster than I usually did during my training. When the results came in, I saw that I had run 22:39, which made me very proud! I was very happy and surprised at the outcome and also thankful that my team was there with me until the end. Thinking back on it, I guess being the underdog has it benefits.