Dad-daughter 10K challenge 2024-2025… Post X1 May 4th 7 days until Bristol 10K 11th May 2025
Today my mind is elsewhere. Daughter 2, not Rachel, is getting married and I need to be in the right place at the right time later this morning, all suited and booted.
Nevertheless, with a week to go until the Bristol 10K, I can file perhaps my final Dad-daughter post until the post-10K report next Sunday.
I have no Rachel data to share, but did meet up with her and the rest of the family involved in the rehearsal yesterday and can report that she looks far more athletic than I.
‘Perception is reality’ is one of those phrases that out there that the unthinking nodding masses who delight in traversing life without stopping to ponder…Oh Dear! Grumpy old man speech underway, beware. Of course, there is some truth in such a statement; ‘mind games’ in sport is big business even if wrapped up in more professional speak as ‘Sports Psychology’.
On a very amateur level, we all know how true this is. Even the bible says in a note of reality ‘as a man thinks so he is’.
For me, the last week is a case in point. Whether I have been hiding a distracting set of emotions in the build-up to daut 2’s wedding or not, I don’t know, but what I do know is that I haven’t managed to complete a mid-week run, pulling up from a 10K after 6K and after 4K in a 5K run.
And yesterday, after halfway round the Parkrun, my mind and body were presenting every good reason under the sun why I should stop and slope off home.
Fortunately another voice prevailed which went something like ‘In a week, you’ll be running a 10K…you can’t cave in after a measly 2.5K…get a move on’. Maybe it was Mr Tutt, my old sergeant-major school PE teacher, back from the dead, but it worked…I did make it to the end.
Perception is reality - is it?
I was sure it was an embarrassingly slow time considering I have the 10K next week…but to my delight it was better than feared at 28:26….AND I’d like you to know, I was 1st in my age category! There were 6 of us stumbling round old enough to know better.
So…is perception reality? I thought I’d run out of gas. I also thought I was running slower than 30’ for 5K.
All one can really conclude, is that I’m loosing my grip on reality…but then a proud dad about to give away his daughter is surely entitled to some inner-entropy!