When I woke up on Sunday morning, the date of the 2015 Leeds Abbey Dash, the last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed and run a 10k.

I couldn’t sleep at all the night before, falling to sleep around 3am. The 7:30am alarm was not welcome at all, neither was the view outside my window. It was chucking it down with rain and the wind was horrendous.

Reading back at my 2014 Leeds Abbey Dash recap, it seems it was pretty similar! I also had trouble getting a taxi! I ended up having to download Uber, which is something I’m really against due to my previous experience of an Uber, where the taxi driver spent the whole journey telling me I should get the Uber app and trying to convince me that my current taxi firm are liars. Oh, and that I should rate him 5 stars.

Apparently it was high demand, and they charged me 2.6x more than usual. So a 6 quid taxi cost me £15.

Not impressed!

So, I finally made it to the race. Luckily the rain had calmed to a steady drizzle.

The start was muddy, there was no running on the mud.

As usual, the race started in waves and we started right at the back.

The rain wasn’t bad at all by this point. I had my Garmen on and decided to do what I did with my last 10k, run at my comfortable pace for 0.9 miles, then run hard for 0.1 mile.

I knew I wouldn’t beat my previous time of 1:04 due to not going for a run in a month, but I was determined to come under an hour and 10 minutes.

It was tough going! There was only one water station half way and we had to queue for a cup and then queue for someone to fill the cup. I easily lost 45 seconds for half a cup of water. I wish I hadn’t bothered looking back. I’m kind of disappointed with the water station.

The Run for All events tend to have 3 stations that give out bottles so you don’t have to stop at all.

As always, it’s the last half a mile that’s the hard is in Leeds races due to having to run up a slip road.

My garmin clocked 6.2miles and I couldn’t see the end, it was really disheartening. Finally I saw the clock – there wasn’t the usually ‘finish’ sign like there usually is so it kind of crept up on me!

I finished with a time of 1:08. Which isn’t as good as my last 10k, but under an hour and 10 minutes. I’m okay with that seeing as I didn’t train!

I love the t-shirt, too.

This is the last race of the year for me. I’ve done two 10ks, a 5k and a half marathon. Same again next year?