F Off Long Covid Half

This is your fault! Whoever decided to organise a trip to Benidorm for the half marathon/10k I blame you! But also, I am so very grateful!

When the posts came out about organising a trip it sparked something in my head of … “could I do that? .. maybe the 10k and have a great weekend away?”. I began thinking seriously about it. After nearly 2.5 years of not being able to run due to long covid the thought of this was enticing and hey…. If I couldn’t run, then I would still have a lot of fun. I checked my calendar and remembered we are away 2 weeks later, so decided I could not do Benidorm… BUT my head was telling me… go on… give it a go… so the idea of running a Benidorm virtual half marathon in Thanet on the same day took shape.

My training began at the end of August… I had been running on and off since around May but not regularly. I started back on Mondays, took on hills training every week and later on began joining the Sunday morning runs.

I began my half at 10:00 from The Jetty in Broadstairs seen off by friends and family, some of whom followed me round on a scooter taking videos and 2 friends ran the whole distance with me. It was wonderful to see brilliant TRR Pam at the start and she ran almost the whole way with us before having to veer off to attend a party. The wind going out towards Pegwell was ferocious. I had friends turn up along the route and TRACCIES Rich Harrison, Paul Cherry and Andy Whitnell all hung around after Park Run to cheer me on 🙂

Heading back was better with the wind behind us…. I was feeling great…. It really helped seeing friendly faces along the route. Heading down the slope towards Spoons I could see a few people waiting to run the last part with me and one was my sister who surprised me and also managed to get my mum on the phone so I could have a quick video chat with her… amazing!

More people joined at Dumpton and we all headed along the prom to The Jetty for the finish. Tape was put up and I ran through it feeling very emotional. We then headed for a huge lunch at The Tartare Frigate and to warm up!

I did it and I can safely say F*** Off to Long Covid….. and to whoever you are who suggested a road trip to Benidorm… THANK YOU. X

Janice