Last week I ran my 7th race of the year, it was my 5th 5k. (the other two races were 5miles) I ran with my husband, my sister and her boyfriend (Becky and Tim).
I felt pretty good going into the race, with just one thing weighing heavily on my mind. There is a bridge to run over, and then run back. I figured it would be easy as pie, I ran over a bridge in the Miramichi race and had my best time yet.
The race started out great other then the fact that it was a very small path and we were very crowded, making it hard to pass. I felt good about my pace.
Then I saw the bridge.
Now, I have a fear of heights, bridges, and water. This particular bridge is exclusively a walking/biking bridge. It’s half a kilometre long with a river far below. As I said, I was fine during the Miramichi run, I mean I wasn’t crazy about having to run that bridge but it was concrete and I couldn’t see the water and I just focused on getting it over with as quickly as possible.
This bridge, called the “Bill Thorpe Walking Bridge“, is an old railway bridge and the floor is made of large wooden beams. As soon as the bridge’s steel beams came into view I started to panic. I calmed myself down and hurried over the bridge staying in the centre and trying to control my breathing, a few times I found myself gasping. As soon as I was off the bridge I had to stop and catch my breath from running way faster then normal, and because I was on the verge of bursting into tears!
The way back was awful. Every step I took freaked me out. If there was even the slightest give to a beam my breath caught in my throat and I panicked a little more. I had to keep myself from running too fast because I knew that if I ran out of breath and had to stop on the bridge I would never get off of it by myself. As much as I tried to calm myself down, I just couldn’t.
Finally I reach the end and I was literally fighting back tears because I was so scared. Silly, isn’t it?
I beat my fastest time by 6 seconds, which is better then nothing. I am super proud of myself for getting over that bridge, but I don’t want to have to do it again for awhile.
Now that we are able the run the entire 5k without stopping we need to work on our speed to get our time down. I really want to jump up to a 10k but I want to get my 5k down below 30minutes.
