Race for Life – The Event!

Saturday. The Big Day (relatively speaking)

Alex woke with my alarm, said “Todays phrase will be: ‘Sucks To Be You'”, and rolled back over to go back to sleep. With those inspiring words, I got ready.

I was up pretty early, partly from excitement/nerves, but partly because Zoe and James (and Homily!) were due to come round before we went up to the Downs.

Its silly really, I’ve done Race for Life twice before this year, and I felt more nervous for this race, even down to forgetting that I’d need some safety pins!

After a delay at the house, and an even longer one once we got to Clifton (have you ever tried to get a parking space up there when its busy?!), we parked up and headed towards the music that was playing. It was a bit of a hike from the car to the stage area, but we soon met up with Katey and Abbi

Here’s the five of us after the race.

I had left my back sign until the last minute as usual, and kept it simple. While we were waiting to set off, I heard the women behind me whispering “ooh she’s lost her mum” and felt guilty for making them feel bad!

Here’s Zoe and I setting off with Katey and Abbi in front. We were all feeling pretty lazy, so chose to walk. Katey started planning next years Race while we were walking – apparently we’re going to run and dress up in pink tutus. Uh oh.

We did the 5k in about an hour, and met up with Michaela, her mum, her mums friend and her boyfriend who was taking pictures and making videos. I can’t wait to see it! Michaela and her group ran the 5k in half the time it took us to walk it – that’s my aim next year!

As always, each Racer was given a goodie bag and a medal. Zoe’s look extra excited here because they let her have two medals – one for Homily!

As we were doing the final stretch, people were cheering everyone on, but when Homily appeared, there were a lot more cheers for her, so many people saying “Aww, look at the little dog!”

I’m so glad I managed to do the Race this year with a group of friends – it’s a lot easier to keep going with someone by your side! We had Alex and James on cheering duty – sadly they decided they needed to bring cameras with them as well. Cheers guys. (all pics in this post were taken by Alex)

Good luck to everyone that’s still left to do their Races. It seemed like last weekend was race day for my family – I had cousins in Chester and the North East (I think Darlington?) doing it on the Sunday. Yay!

If you’d still like to donate, please visit my Race for Life page at www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/hayley_c – just because I’ve reached my target of £250 (thank you!) doesn’t mean you don’t have to donate ;)