NYE running reflections and a virtual 10km

Super inspirational athlete and all round awesome human Matthew Green reflects on the running year that was 2020 and a ‘tough as nails’ NYE 10km. Results from the RNE NYE virtual 10km can be found at the bottom of this post.

Happy running, Rach and Tom xx

Strange to be saying goodbye to 2020. It's much lambasted, for good reason. I'm sure like many others running has offered something different this year. From me, I'm selfishly saying a little thankyou to some parts of 2020 as this year has had some of the best running of my life, without a doubt. I went to places and met brilliant people because of running. I helped people with their running adventures and people helped me with mine. I was kind to myself and avoided injury for the whole year (except for a wasp sting induced week of rest, but that's different...). I ran the most miles in a day, week, month and year than I've ever run before. In summary: I did running and I enjoyed it. Of course, things didn't always go to plan, but plans aren't everything.

Every now and then mojo runs low, and one of those days was today. I was not keen on running 10km in the cold. Before tricking myself into my running gear, I spent some time thinking about running and what my plan was today. I decided to try and make it as simple as possible: run 10km. Finish strong and hold your head up high for the last miles of the year.

I guess training in the next few weeks will lead to some conditioning for this sort of running, because today was tough as nails! Christmas sluggishness, say what? It felt like I could hardly get oxygen into my lungs and to my legs (which felt like concrete) and my brow was furrowed until I forcibly plastered a smile on it for the last few KM. But I remembered the plan and just dug in, searching the tank for the last of the 2020 running fuel. It was fumes only, that's for sure! I'm quite lucky - time on the clock doesn't bother me that much. I think it's the whole process that defines me as a runner, not just the result, and today was the culmination of a whole process. So many times it would have been easy to not run this year, today included. But we find our motivation, we find our energy and we go for it, in easy times and challenging times too.

The end.

Matthew Green x

RNE Virtual 10km 31 December 2020

Name Surname Time

Thomas  Payn 00:33:59

Christian Van Oostrum 00:34:20

Ciaran McAneny 00:38:14

Steve Howliston 00:38:16

Matt Green 00:38:52

Tom  McGrath 00:40:24

Rhian Emanuel 00:41:19

James Davis 00:41:41

Thomas Lesnier 00:42:27

Katherine Henry  00:42:32

Victoria Ford 00:45:22

Alex Hoggard 00:45:40

Robert Needleman 00:47:19

Ian Needleman 00:49:00

Andrew Stringer 00:51:21

Daniel Maskit 00:51:31

Tamsin Burland 00:53:56

Efe Avan-Nomayo 01:01:00

Katherine Stringer 01:35:23

Jemma Rumsey 01:35:23