10 runs that made me #2: Now what do you do?

So having completed a couch to 5k plan and knowing nothing about running events, clubs, never heard of parkrun, what do you do next? Couch to 5k had a goal, to get to jogging for 30 minutes without stopping, hopefully going at least 5k in the process, but what next now I'd got off the couch? I thought I would dip my toe in to the tepid bath of running events and looked for something not too far away from home and not too distant in time. 

The event I chose was a 5k fun run organised by 2:09 Events alongside one of their summer trail 10k events in Swinley Forest near Bracknell. It must have been June 2009, a sunny Sunday morning and I cycled the 5 or so miles to get to the event. The fun run started after the 10k set off and from a different location. I lined up with about 30 other kids and a few adults and as soon as the gun went, all the kids dashed off ahead at a sprint. 

I jogged along on the course gradually catching up with wheezing kids with stitches and struggled up the few small hills in the first 3 or 4k. This is where things started to get a bit confusing. With 4k done I was pretty sure we hadn't turned back towards the finish at any point and we were supposed to be only 1k away. We were still occasionally coming across marshals, so we must have been on the course, but I was looking at my stopwatch thinking "I'm sure I'm not that slow, we should have finished by now." 

Eventually at about 40 minutes in we got back on a trail I recognised as being near the start. I finished in about 10th place and everyone in front of me was under 12 years old. It turned out that we had been directed on to part of the 10k course and had done about 8k instead of 5. When I crossed the line I got given a prize - a blue 2:09 events t-shirt - because I was the first person across the line who was big enough for it to fit! I didin't stop to chat with anyone, I was probably still too shy to do that. I just hung around for a bit with some worried looking parents as their very tired kids and spouses trailed in and then cycled home. 

My first event, first trail run and first prize for anything I can remember ever, since my Cycling Proficiency Test or 33yards swimming certificate. I was really happy to get that t-shirt, not that I had actually won anything or particularly deserved it, but it still had a positive effect. When I got home, I got on line on "the information superhighway" (I think that's what they called it back then) and started looking for another event to enter.