Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Regent's Park 10km race

Yay! Just ran my first properly timed 10k race this Saturday and I'm well pleased with the results! After having a fairly bumpy ride this year with injuries and a bit of illness topped off with 3 weeks of no running at all due to sciatica I managed to pull a sub 50 min result out of the hat! :D

I'm going to hit that 45 min mark this year!

Race report: Regent's Park 10k Summer Series

I made sure I got an early night the night before, and that I had plenty of carbs and all the good, healthy stuff the night before (including a bit of ice cream to make sure I was comfortable, hehe). It was drizzling outside as I had my bran flakes / banana breakfast, and I wasn't sure my chosen outfit of a t-shirt was really a good idea.. I decided to go with it and left the house, only to get fairly wet by the rain on my way to the bus stop.. was this going to work out?!

I arrived at Regent's Park at 8.45, 15 mins to go till the start - hurry up! Power walked to the Hub, got changed, left my bag, power walked to the start.. It's still drizzling heavily.. Off goes the start! Oh no, my ipod's not on, fumbling with it.. man! I'm running too fast.. Get caught up by the moment - all these people running faster than me! After 1.5k I settle into a stable pace, although still faster than normal.. This is going fine, the drizzle's ok too. There's a woman running around my pace, I'll stick to her.. First lap of three in 16.30, this is fine.. Lap two was nice and easy, still a bit wet, but nothing much to worry about, I keep my pace. There's people taking photos - this is fun! I like racing! The last lap is here - I feel my legs getting a bit tired, but halfway through I can see the end - and decide to up my pace a bit to see how many people I can pass. I pass a guy with a t-shirt saying "Only a fool believes there's no God - don't be silly" thinking well, agnostics apparently run faster, I'll take the sillyness any day... The last two corners - I'm running faster - I'm going to catch this guy - no, he sees me, looks and takes off - he's gone like an antilope that's being chased. The last stretch - I push myself, gotta beat that girl, check - beat that one, check! Finish! Ahh.... this was fun!

Walk to the Hub again, grab a banana and some water and think to myself that I really need to race more.

Just went over the final results, and saw that I came better than 25 out of 228 on the women's side and better than 140 out of the 443 total - wow! That rocks!

Friday, June 05, 2009

A job?

Sort of.

I've been volunteering with a charity over the last 2 months, and as a paid position to do exactly what I do as an un-paid volunteer came up, I applied. I got shortlisted, and had an interview, and came second. I didn't get the job, and if I had been writing this yesterday, when I was told I didn't get it, I would undoubtedly have included a much greater amount of disappointment and surly comments. However, even though I was disappointed, I thought a lot about it last night and I realised that maybe it was fine. Decided to take it in my stride, be normal at work, get over myself and my big ego and the assumptions I had unconsciously developed of getting the job because the function covers what I'm doing now and they seem to like what I do.

Another position with the same organisation has come up, as a fundraiser, and I might actually want that job more..? I decided to shift my workload from doing just one day of fundraising to now two a week, whilst retaining my engagement as a facilitator, which was what I was taken onboard to do. After arranging this, at the end of the day, the director asked me aside and offered me a %-paid position.. I'll still be volunteering (I have another month to go) and will increase my hours from 4 to 5 days. The major change is that they will now pay me for 2 days work a week as an interim thing until I either get the fundraising position or my volunteer term comes to an end, at which point I'm sure we'd have a chat about what next. It's really pleasing that they like what I'm doing so much, 'cause really, they didn't actually have to pay for me to stay as I've committed to another month anyway.

This will sound horrible (it does to me!) but before I can actually commit to this new paid position I have to look into what it will mean to the benefits I am currently receiving. If it means I loose more than I will be earning.. well, I'll have to look into how to deal with that. THIS is the trouble of benefits. Hopefully sanity will prevail and it'll be best if I take the job.

Phew, that felt good to write out!