Another Sunday, another medal.
Today was the Woodley 10K. A well-organised event, replete with brass band, beer tent, plant stall and burger bar. The plants and brass band I was happy to enjoy before the race; the beer and burgers came afterwards.
Memo for next year: this is a very flat course, and a good PB prospect.
Memo for this year: shame you weren’t up for it.
I felt bloated and out of sorts today. I’d reached my weight target, just about, managing to lose around 12 pounds over the last three weeks. Great! But the last few days have been a bit disorientating, and the excesses of Friday and last night’s impromptu curry counted against me today. No matter. I had some trouble with selfish car drivers and stroppy 14-year-olds, but it was a decent training run.
The race began well enough, with the first couple of kilometres at around 5:30 pace – good by my standards. Perhaps too good. I tired in the third, and slipped back to 6:15, then 6:30. By this point I knew I’d blown it. I even had to walk for a minute or two here, then again within a mile.
At one point, as I walked, a guy passed me and said, pleasantly: “Jog along with me if you like?”
So I did. We had a chat about Reading Road Runners, his club. As mentioned some weeks ago, I’m still keen to join them when I get the chance to get down to their HQ early enough.
What I re-learnt today was that sometimes it doesn’t matter much. In my case, it probably never matters much. Running a race is a great experience in itself, regardless of how seriously you take the competitive challenge. In other words, a race is more than a race. In a small place like Woodley, it’s a community event first and foremost: people getting together to entertain themselves.
The truth of the ancient cliché that it’s not the winning but the taking part was very clear today.
