Nicci Runs: Determination is everything.


Me at the finish, my medal is made of wood and on the back it reads "your piece of the parks"	.

I did it! I completed my half marathon yesterday in the pretty respectable time of 2:03:29. Which is far far better than I could ever have hoped for! And on top of that I absolutely loved running, the atmosphere was incredible and I had the biggest grin the whole way round. It really is true that the crowd cheering really lifts you and keeps you going, and until mile 12 it didn't really feel like hard work at all. A definite pinch myself moment, was running over London Bridge in the glorious autumn sunshine with Big Ben just starting to chime. The whole course was so inspiringly beautiful and a joy to run, I highly recommend this race to anyone thinking about trying out a half marathon. It was flat the whole way round, seriously beautiful and had a great atmosphere!

My knee did give up on me fairly early on in the run and it is now protesting a lot, especially when going down stairs, but I decided to just run through it and use my Jedi mind powers. The runners for Oxfam had the best slogan on their t-shirts which I decided to adopt as my mantra while running, "Determination is everything". I really think this is what got me round without having to stop and walk once and with such a big smile on face. I pretty much repeated this to myself the whole way round when my knee got bad until it passed again. Well done Oxfam! Although big credit has to go to my cheerleading team who were amazing! I think I had the best banners out of everyone there, serious effort and creativity went into those! You guys are superstars! More about them later though...

Another person also shouted out through the crowds "run through the pain, it's only temporary". This really resonated with me too, I thought about the people I was running for and the pains they must be going through in their lives and it gave me the strength to keep running for them. Even though I hurt now, I know it is temporary and the money I have raised will help some other people to realise that pain is temporary and isn't something they always have to live with. Someone will be there to help them through and that is partly because of the fundraising the whole MIND team did yesterday. I am very proud to have been part of such a great team and all the mind staff were brilliant and really looked after the runners. We got free massages afterwards and food and goody bags. It was a really nice little touch.

Back to my support team then, my mum and brother Scott came down to cheer me on. My mum and sister had made the world's biggest banner for me! They were in Hyde park waiting for me and apparently I went so fast they didn't have time to get the banner out for me the second time I passed them! Ed was running around the course trying to catch me at various points along the way which was so lovely, he kept it low key with a MIND t-shirt which he wrote on "Yeah, Nicci!", you've got to love a guy who writes a gramatically correct slogan about you on his t-shirt!

And the dream team cheerleaders Freya and Lucy had a "crafternoon" and came up with the most inventive and gorgeous sign for me and were also running about round the course to cheer me on. I actually nearly cried the first time I spotted them as Dolly Parton 9 to 5 had just come on my playlist the second before I saw them, and we all went to see Dolly last year. The timing was just too perfect and the sign completely blew me away! I couldn't have done it without them so thank you so much all of you! And also thank you so much to everyone who sponsored me!!

Now I'm figuring out what to do next, I'm thinking some sort of adventure run involving mud, obstacles and cargo nets...

Nicci
xoxo