There’s nothing quite like entering a race to stir up the motivational juices. It seems to work on a number of levels:
- You start to imagine running it: you sense the noise, the crowds, the competition. The adrenaline pumping.
- Entering a race almost panics you into planning a training schedule, or checking how it will fit into a broader training plan. The fear of being under-prepared.
- The PB fantasy. This year’s target is still to be reached. Will I do it this time?
- What’s the course like? Scenic? Historic? Hilly? The imagination stirs.
- The location. If it’s some distance away, perhaps we’ll make a day or even a weekend of it. What or who can we visit nearby, or en route?
- Another tick in the box. Another medal. Hurrah!
I entered two races today: the local Woodley 10K next weekend, and the Great South Run in October. The GSR is a ten mile race, in Portsmouth. An odd distance, and an odd place to go for a race. But I keep hearing good things about this event, and it seems like a good final fling before the serious business of Dublin, two weeks later.
So here’s the latest picture for 2003:
|
Date
|
Event
|
Remarks
|
| Wed 1 Jan | Hyde Park 10K | Ran |
| Sun 16 Feb | Goring 10K | Ran |
| Sun 2 March | Silverstone Half Marathon | Ran |
| Sun 9 March | Reading Half Marathon | Ran |
| Sun 16 March | Bath Half Marathon | Entered but pulled out, injured |
| Sun 18 May | Woodley 10K | Entered |
| Sun 08 Jun | Wargrave 10K | Definite intention |
| Sun 22 Jun | Boreham Wood Half Marathon | Definite intention |
| Mon 23 Jun | 18 week Dublin training begins | |
| Sun 17 Aug | Burnham Beeches Half Marathon | Probable |
| Sun 07 Sep | Bristol Half Marathon | Entered |
| Sun 21 Sep | Great North Run (Half Marathon, Newcastle – South Shields) | Entered |
| Sun 28 Sep | Windsor Half Marathon | Possible |
| Sun 12 Oct | Great South Run, Portsmouth (10 miles) | Entered |
| Mon 27 Oct | Dublin Marathon | Definite intention |
| Sun 16 Nov | Havana Half Marathon | Definite intention |
I’m beginning to think that Windsor may be a September race too far, but I’ll leave it in for the moment because… because it makes my list look impressive.
A good forty minute run at 6:15 this morning. Just like last Friday’s post-Pilates run, this one was around a minute a mile faster than the preceding two outings. If this happens again next week, I’ll have to regard it as a strong indication that Pilates — or perhaps just intensive stretching, whatever name it goes by — is a great help.
It’s been a good day in general. I seem to have lost ten pounds since the current campaign began, 18 days ago. Only two more pounds to go to hit my Woodley target in nine days time.
The other good news is that today I managed to get a couple of tickets for the second leg of the QPR-Oldham play off match, next Wednesday. (The first leg is tomorrow.) I don’t regard myself as unusually pessimistic, but it just occurred to me that while I desperately hope that we get to the Cardiff final, and win, I have a total, unshakeable conviction that we won’t get through the Oldham semi-final stage. Our misfortunes have stretched so far and so long, that failure has become a kind of given. To the point that even to be beaten in the play-offs would seem like some kind of success. As Jim Morrison growled:
Well, I been down so Goddamn long
That it looks like up to me…
Wish us luck. Ha ha!!
