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March
Trafford 10k 4th March (not my finest hour)
Saturday dawned, migraine threatened, wondered about all day with filthy headache which fortunately never tipped over in to the flashing lights and nausea stakes but was bad enough.
Saturday evening searched out the Garmin, the trusty pacemaker of previous campaigns. Oh great - battery dead as a dodo, look for charger and advance to bathroom where I normally plug it in to the dual voltage shaver socket ( I bought it in US where it was £100 cheaper) only to find that Mr SW had removed said shaver socket and replaced it with single English voltage variety, same style for the two in the boys bathroom. No Garmin for Trafford 10K then.
Search for heart rate monitor to use instead of sports watch as beautiful Nike graphite watch is back with the manufacturer as the strap fell apart for the second time. Would you Adam and Eve it , battery dead in monitor, mutter expletives but do manage to find cell battery and small enough philips screwdriver to fit it.
Retire to bed clutching head. Resolve not to do 10k tomorrow.
Sunday morning, wake up at 8, fall out of bed, assemble running stuff, grab banana and fall in to car after battling my way round the house into a strong head wind.
First warning sign, a nasty twinge to left calf muscle as I engage clutch.
Negotiate M60, drive past Man. City’s training ground, eventually find running venue, Partington leisure centre. Everyone looks worryingly lean and fit, “oh b*g***r,” this is obviously a race and not a run.
Wind is horrific, many people buying running tights and jackets from the running supply stall in the main hall, everyone else is trying to cram into the foyer to avoid the wind. Queue for loo.
Bloke with megaphone bullies everyone into assembling at the start line, I shamble into position at the back, no point in going any further forward this is obviously where I will end up anyway.
Shuffle off when megaphone man blows a horn. Why am I doing this?
My legs are stiff, my gait is short and stilted for the first few hundred yards but eventually I begin to wake up a little. The wind is horrific, the sort that doesn’t go round corners, just blasts through them. What’s worse, it’s in your face, in fact it never seemed to deviate from there throughout the race. Now I know logic would dictate that at some time it must have been behind us, but I can’t remember that time, the only respite was when we run alongside a hedge for a hundred yards or so. Did I mention that the course was flat? Oh so flat, bleak brown cold fields.
The first problem was there were only kilometre markers, call me old fashioned (well, just plain old will do) but my brain/legs do not compute kilometres, they are mile legs, kilometres just don’t do it for me. The first kilometre mark came along at 5 minutes 14 seconds, I took me a good few meters to calculate that this pace would not get me to the finish in an hour, which is round about normal for my little legs. But did I increase my pace? Well I did try for a bit, but the wind was too strong and the flesh was too weak.
I caught up a girl who was kissing her husband goodbye while waving him on to carry on without her ( romance on a run – ahhh!). We had a bit of a chinwag for a while, nice girl, Rebecca, started running 2 years ago after she had her first baby. She dropped behind me and the only other people I had any interaction with was a fat bloke who kept walking for a bit when I would overtook him and then he would blast past me for a bit before taking another breather when I would overtake him again, you know the score, the hare and tortoise thingy. There was one other middle-aged lady who had blasted off a bit quick and had obviously come to regret it at about 6K (what is that in miles?)
I wanted to stop, I had really had enough when the 7k marker hove into view (even the markers were clattered by the wind), but thought “nil carborundum”…, “in for a penny” and all those other hoary old chestnuts and kept plodding on.
As we were nearing the leisure centre I could see runners coming in the opposite direction, that was just too dispiritng, I hate it when you think you are nearly home and they direct you back to snake along the same course. “Sod it” I muttered and slowed even more, only to find that as I turned the next corner the finish was posted as being 500 metres away? Who were those misguided souls running in the opposite direction? Had they just finished and decided to go round again just for fun?
Jogged along to the finish only to hear heavy breathing behind me, Was determined not to let this person through so pumped the little legs a bit faster in a rash attempt at sprint finish ( these things are all relative!) She didn’t get past me. I introduced myself later apologising for my unsportsmanlike like behaviour explaining that it was my first run in a new age category, she then told me she was 60, how embarrassing to find I had out-sprinted a woman 5 years older!!!!! (she won her category).
And my time? I hear you ask…. (Whispers… [SIZE="1"]1 hour 3 minutes 14 seconds[/SIZE],) that was gun time, I forgot to turn off the heart rate monitor stop watch J Almost my slowest 10k to date.
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I'm not sure which of those two horrors would cause me most distress SW.
