From the previous entry:
Sometimes you get away with it, but usually you don’t. This time, I seem to have got away with it.
I spoke too soon.
I wasn’t the victim of an immediate collapse in resolve, more a victim of the Curse of Niguel. A couple of days after writing the above, I met up with the celebrated Nigel of this parish. Not for the first time, a pleasant rural plod with the great man presaged a precipitous and quite unforeseeable decline in my athletic career.
We were galloping heartily through Bracknell Forest, discussing the route of the Oxford 10K, when my right toe encountered a piece of rock embedded in the bumpy trail. Offering less resistance than the rock, the toe stayed where it was, nestled against the obstacle, while the other 99.95% of me carried on regardless. Result? A couple of traumatic seconds later and rather to my surprise, I find myself in a horizontal position, staring intently at a patch of brown earth.
It’s the fourth time I can recall making an unscheduled dive to the ground while running. Once on a moonless night in Yate, when a sleeping policeman said hello. On the canal towpath in 2004, and again while plodding the Thames Path with the running club in 2005. Falling over while sober seems inexcusable, but four tumbles in 5.5 years probably isn’t too bad.
My dignity tank shows a yellow warning light at the best of times, but a mid-sentence plunge pretty much siphons off the dregs. The only obvious, immediate physical consequences were a few grazes. Next day however, the toe was throbbing in protest, and I had to take another few days’ rest. Then came a trip to Ireland with work. My bag was swollen with running paraphernalia but it never emerged. Perhaps I could have tried harder to squeeze out a run. Instead, the Guinness and the football won the day. Ah well, it happens. Returned home last weekend and opted to potter in the garden rather than plod the mean streets of rural West Berkshire.
Last night I finally resurrected myself by joining up with the local running club. I knew this would be a tough experience, and it was. Despite sticking with the slow group, I found the 4½ undulating miles pretty hellish.
Tonight I returned to the scene of my downfall. The Bracknell Forest Five is one of life’s nice races. It’s such a gentle affair, with something of a Midsummer Night’s Dream quality about it all. Truly captivating. You follow a soft, springy track meandering through dense, fairytale woods. My GPS watch didn’t like it much, but the rest of us were well satisfied.
Given that I work just ten minutes drive away, it was inevitable that I was very nearly late for the start. Distinct nightmare memories of the Fleet Half in 2002 hung in the air as I parked haphazardly at the Look Out, and sprinted through the woods in the wake of a couple of distant stragglers.
I made it to the start a minute or so before the hooter, just in time to find Nigel and have a quick natter. “Right”, he said, “I’ll wait for you at the finish”, and vanished into the crowd of runners in front of us. I reflected that his remark had been presumptuous. Perhaps I’d spent a fortnight at the Gebresalassie Training School. But I hadn’t, and after a heavily panted first half mile, during which almost the entire field had evaporated from forward view, I ruefully accepted that it was indeed fairly possible that this time he may just edge in ahead of me.
This was a hard race for me. A revealing remark, as all the indicators seemed to point in the other direction. For a start, it was short. And almost dead flat, apart from a one-minute hill bang in the middle. Even the weather conditions were perfect: a mild to warm evening underneath, but cooled by a pleasant, delicate rain. It should have been a breeze. Should have been, but wasn’t. And Nigel did indeed edge home — 11 minutes ahead of me.
I was struck by just how easily and rapidly I can now lose fitness (or my version of fitness). After feeling better than I have done for well over a year, I now find that just a couple of weeks of inactivity feels like an absence of months.
But it’s OK. In fact it’s good. It’s good because I can now see what I’m really up against. Better to discover it now than further down the line. My big autumn target is the Dublin Marathon on October 29. The standard 18 week training plan starts the week after next. I’ve got 10 days or so to ease myself back to where I was a month ago. It’s a final warning, and it’s come at the perfect time.
A decent longish run at the weekend, and I’ll be right back on track.
