Hazel Robertson provides us with a reason to stay positive…

This was to be a warm up for the Lochaber Marathon at end April and my training had been going really well….. until (as usual) I caught a cold at 2 weeks before the race.  It lingered on, with sinus congestion etc and I was only just fit enough to run on the day.  I started off far too fast doing the first 10k faster than I’ve ever done a 10k! Then turned into a headwind for 4 miles along a very straight road.  Lost the will to live, stopped looking at my watch and decided just to treat it as a good training run.  A killer hill at mile 11 nearly wiped me out, but I struggled on feeling a bit sorry for myself and feeling annoyed with myself for feeling sorry for myself.  About half a mile from the finish I realized I actually could have got a PB if I had just pulled myself together and ended up 30 seconds behind my PB after putting on a sprint to the finish.  Not the best experience, but quite a good lesson for the marathon – don’t start too quickly and stay positive!