How was your weekend running?

A proper shot put legend, New Zealand’s Valerie Adams – though even she finally proved fallible this weekend, losing for the first time in an astonishing 57-competition, near five-year period.
Photograph: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images

This weekend I learned an important lesson: running a 10k race half an hour after eating pancakes is not a pleasant experience. There, that’s the kind of pearl of wisdom you all come here for, right? Where would you all be without that kind of expert, insider knowledge?

So, an explanation … It was my club open 10km race yesterday and I was supposed to be doing it as part of a long run: 9-mile “warm up”, then race, then home – at which point, pancakes would have been entirely justified. Instead, my childcare plans fell through, I thought I wasn’t going to be able to run at all, so I ate pancakes with the small fry by way of consolation. Then discovered, thanks to a lovely friend, that I could go after all. Cue mad dash into running kit and out of the door.

The race is up on Wimbledon Common, all off-road, on gravel trails and muddy paths, though the mud was firmly set after the recent hot weather. It’s the kind of trail race that feels as if you ought to be able to go faster – it’s not hilly, but the terrain seems to suck the energy out of you. Or perhaps that was the pancakes … Anyway, I was glad just to be out and running, albeit that spending the entire race trying very hard not to succumb to a stitch or think about breakfast didn’t make for an entirely pleasurable run.

Though I didn’t get many miles in this weekend, I did have a very busy week, including clocking up a heptathlon-of-sorts on the hottest day of the year. Taking part in a track meet for the Fleet Street Runners for the first time, I managed in one manic 90-minute period to do (OK, attempt to do) the long jump, the shot put, the 1km race walk, the 100m, the 400m and the mile. Lessons I learned from that event are as follows:

1. Race walking is hard work, in a very odd way, and absolutely kills your shins.
2. The world of shot put hasn’t missed me much since I last threw one, aged about 14. Still, I came third. Of, um, four.
3. Want a lesson in humility for a distance runner? Make them do the 100m. I like to think I can run a bit. I really cannot sprint.

So, who else has thrown a shot put, fallen over in a long-jump pit, run multiple race distances and eaten too many pancakes in the last week, then? As always, share your pancake-eating PBs and shot-put woes below the line.