After waking to a very foggy Aberdeen morning it was a relief to be standing on a dry start line with the sun out. With my running playlist on, I was ready to take on the Balmoral 10k.

I started quickly, maybe getting caught up in it all slightly. I soon tried to find a good pace that I could take through the whole run.

At just over 2km in I realised I was quite thirsty and I really should have taken heed of the warning to drink more. I continued, knowing there was a water stop at some point, then made it past the 3km marker and knew that meant it wasn’t far until “the hill” that everyone had told me about.

I slowed to a fast walk on the hill which allowed me to overtake many around me. As we rose to the top the pipers played, signalling that the worst was over. Knowing I’d made it up the hill in reasonable time and that it was mainly downhill for the rest, I settled back into my good pace.
The kilometres started to pass and I bumped into an ex-colleague for a few kilometres, which helped take my mind off the running – and before I knew it I found myself at the 9km marker. “Brilliant!”, I thought.
I wanted to try and push on a bit and pick up my pace, but it was a struggle. I continued my pace until the last 200m where I came into view of people on the home straight. I finally found some extra energy and pushed on to sprint through the finish line.

It was my first 10k and I had heard a lot about “the hill” so I had an untold target in my head of 1 hour 10 minutes. I was delighted to find out that I came in dead on 1 hour 7 minutes!

Tired, but delighted to have finished and raised over £600 for CRY, I vowed never to do another 10k… but we’ll see 🙂

Lyle Smith