What a day! I drove myself to Chatsworth House, up in the Peak District in Derbyshire, to do the VitalityMove 10K. I left exhausted, sunburnt, and so happy!

As I mentioned in my last blog post, goal-setting has been a big priority for me. I’ve never run a 10K (that’s 6.2 miles for my American friends), and when I saw that there was a run up at Chatsworth, I had to do it for the beautiful scenery. [Side note: while I’ve run tons of 5Ks, half-marathons, and even finished a full, the 10K was never a distance I’ve done. Weird.]

When I signed up, I knew Martin was going to be out of the country, racing British GT at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium (spoiler alert: he won! Woo!). Without really anyone to go with, I decided to take the plunge and just go by myself. It was so worth it.

VitalityMove Chatsworth was hosted by Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, famed British athlete and the 2012 gold medalist in the Heptathlon, and had seven different races you could do (yes, you read that right. Seven!). There was a morning and an afternoon 10K, a noon 5K, and four different 1-mile runs. And for every run you completed, you got a medal or a wristband. I set the goal of doing the morning 10K and ALL of the 1-mile runs.

Rise and Shine

I showed up super early, right at 9am. (Full disclosure, sometimes I get nervous when I drive myself to unfamiliar places, since I’m still not sure of the main motorways and have a habit of leaving roundabouts at the wrong exit. So I left the house pretty early to ensure I’d get there on time.). I got there early enough to walk to the event, collect my bib, and do a little warm-up and people-watching before my first event – the first of my four 1-mile runs.

I knew I was in trouble for the day when I got to about the 1/2-mile point. I train on asphalt, and this terrain was definitely cross country. Think grass, gravel paths, and tire ruts. It’s not that I was in pain, not at all, but that I could feel different muscles working that I was used to! For those who are non-runners, running cross country really works your leg-stabilizing muscles around your ankle and up the sides of your legs. When you have uneven terrain, it’s those muscles that keep you from rolling an ankle.

Either way, I’d set a goal and knew I wanted to complete it, so I finished the one-mile and set myself up for the 10K.

Climbing Uphill

With the music pumping and the group warm-up done (shout out to whoever led us in the warm-up; she was awesome!), everyone headed over to the start line. The air horn went off, and we immediately started climbing. Uphill. For what felt like forever.

Let me back up. I checked the elevation map online before I showed up. But apparently, I have no idea what 150 vertical meters looks like because I was not prepared for that climb. It was one of those where you started off uphill, thinking, “Okay, I’ve got this. They warned me about the hill. This I can do.” And then you turn the corner and there’s more. And then you turn another corner and it turns into gravel. And then you get to the real hill, the one they warned you about, and wonder what the heck it was that you just climbed if they didn’t classify it as a hill.

But, I will say, the view at the top was incredible. And it made me feel better that literally everyone around me struggled, too. Admittedly, I walked up most of it, especially once we got to the real hill.

“We’ve Got This”

What was really inspiring to me was that runners in England are just as randomly awesome and supportive as runners in America. If you’ve run a few races, you’ve probably been that person who is just struggling. Like, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, this-race-will-never-end, why-did-I-even-start-running-in-the-first-place kind of struggling. And somehow, a random person will come up beside you and say, “Run with me. We’ve got this.”

It is the coolest thing in the world, and one of those moments where you just want to hug them but you don’t have the energy. That happened to me today.

After climbing this monumental hill, I was on the struggle bus. My legs were shot. I didn’t have the ankle endurance to sail through this thing with ease. And then this awesome woman appeared and said, “I’ve been following you this whole race. Let’s run together.” And so we did.

When you have another person you’re accountable for, you push yourself harder. I knew I couldn’t quit because she was struggling. And she knew she couldn’t quit because I was struggling. So we did it together and laughed a little along the way. Thank heaven for her, because that 10K was tough.

Goals? #Goals

I finished slower than my typical pace, which meant I only had 20 minutes from the time I crossed the finish line of the 10K to get to the finish line of the second 1-mile run! I took a second to recover a bit and catch my breath, and then resigned to the fact that the 1-mile was going to be a walked cool-down. No matter, I finished it and immediately went into the third 1-mile. It was slow, but sure, and I finished.

At this point in the day, I hadn’t sat down for three hours, and in the process had completed 9.2 miles, so it was time to refuel and rest! I sat down for about 15 minutes to stretch, in hopes my legs wouldn’t cool down too much before my last mile, then walked around the grounds of Chatsworth to see the absolutely stunning home and out-buildings.

I got back to the main event site just in time to see Jessica giving out awards to the top 3 10K and 5K finishers. Seeing inspiring people doing cool things was enough motivation to push me through that last mile, collecting my fourth wrist band of the day. I had done it! Proud as a peacock, I set off to the car to change my shoes and head home.

Heading to Windsor

I absolutely loved doing this event. The music was amazing the whole day, the people were friendly and knowledgeable, the route was well-marked, and the energy was high the whole day! Lucky for us, VitalityMove has a second location – Windsor!

While a date has not been set for this event, one can only hope that the route will be a bit flatter and that my schedule will open up so I can be there. A huge congratulations to Jessica Ennis and the entire team for a smooth event, and an even bigger congratulations to everyone who set a goal today and worked to achieve it.

I may be exhausted, sunburnt, and covered in dirt from the runs today, but I’m super proud that I set out to do something awesome, and ran 10.2 miles in the process!

Check out Jessica’s Top 5 Tips to Goal Setting, which I thought was super relevant to my recent focuses, plus several more scenic photos of the gorgeous landscape I got to see by foot.

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