VHI Women's Mini Marathon

This is, by far, the biggest Women's running event in Ireland. in 2015, nearly 40,000 women took part in this 10 Km race and if you think about it, that's 1% of the entire population of Ireland!

You can run it, you can jog it, you can even walk it, as long as you're having fun :)

It is a great event where most of participants raise awareness and funds for a cause close to their heart. Myself and my colleague Alex, supported Bubble Gum Club which is fundation granting wishes to disabled and terminally ill children.

The format of The Run has changed over the years. For a long time, the start of the run was quite disorganised where runners, joggers and walkers were all mixed in at the start line. As you can imagine, this was causing a chaos for women starting off at different paces considering the volume of participants! This time, starting line was divided into separate zones for walkers, joggers and runners. Anybody could start as a walker, but runners and joggers needed a qualifying time, which I, first time runner, didn't have. Thankfully, Parkrun came into my life and qualifying time was a problem no more for me ;)

Crowd waiting at the starting line

The weather on the day was rather wintery for a June bank holiday, which made us, two beginner runners anxious about running conditions, but as soon as we crossed the start line, the atmosphere of the event and live bands along the route carried us through completely oblivious to the cold, wind and rain! It was our first 'big' race with medals, so emotions in the run up to the event were quite mixed. While I felt that I put in the training and ran one or two 10km distances before, I set a target that I wanted to finish in under an hour...

I did it!

... and I did it! I managed to finish in 00:56:36 :D Great time for my first 10Km race, I was extatic!!!

The run was tough at times, but I didn't allow myself to loose the positive attitude and motivation on the route. It was before I started running with my MP3 player, so I was kept busy looking at all the clourful chaity T-Shirts some of the women were wearing - I didn't think there were so many in Ireland!

Proudly presenting my 1st medal

This run, and finishing time, was a huge achievement for me, so I really wanted to get my time engraved on the medal, but the queues were too long and I gave up eventually. It was only when I was standing in this queue, I started to feel the cold and the fatigue. All of a sudden, a hot meal and a celebratory drink started to appear to me as a better idea ;)

Results were published in The Evening Herald two days later

It's funny how thinking back, my first Mini Marathon, was such a challenge for me whereas now, I'm able to run 10km on a weekly basis without any major fatigue. Of course, if I didn't set myself this goal back then, I'd probably never develop my present running abilities. 

 

I was really looking forward to this years VHI Mini marathon, but it turns out, I will be away that weekend :( so unfortunately I will miss it! I would however encourage any woman thinking about challenging herself or manifesting a cause that's important to her to participate. Just being among all those women wrestling the distance is an overwhelming feeling of feminine power and strenght.

A truly moving experience.