Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Have I ever felt truly ready to run a race? Probably not.
Did I feel ready to run the Crawley 10K today? Definitely not. Did I tell everyone, myself included, that I was ready? Yes.
In the first few innocent strides through Lidgate Forest, I recalled my first ever Philosophy tutorial, in which my venerable tutor, Harry Lesser, asked us: “What is a table?”
It’s a harder question than you think. We argued over it for an hour before he gave us his answer. “A table is something that has tableness.”
Similarly, I ask you; “What is a race?”
Skinny people with bulging eyeballs will give you one answer, and a different one from me. I’m at the hobbyist end of the spectrum. And not even a very noble hobbyist i.e. the type who aches to exceed his previous best. Well, there may occasionally be a whiff of that in me somewhere, particularly in times of relative fitness and enthusiasm. But for the most part, I’m just a collector-hobbyist. Runner as trainspotter, keen to tick another box and add another small rippling clink to the line of medals in my office.
I turn up, lumber round the circuit, get my memento and drive home again, wondering: “Now then, was that number 53 or 54….?”
In fact, the Crawley 10K was number 57, and it was the worst race I’ve ever run. No hang on, not the worst race I’ve ever run, but the worst race I’ve ever run. The event itself was organised well, and the route took us round a scenic area that I enjoyed seeing.
With hindsight I probably shouldn’t have done it. Like a recalcitrant soufflé, my fitness just didn’t rise in time for the party, even though I told everyone that all was well. I was still broadcasting that cheery message as late as a few seconds before the off, to Andy (Seafront Plodder) and his partner, Claire.
My aim was more than modest — to finish within 70 minutes — but I missed this target by a full 5 minutes.
In my defence, let me point to a couple of things. While it was a beautiful course, taking the 600 entrants through a sunlit forest in the middle of a Sussex autumn, it was, it must be said, unexpectedly undulating. My Garmin reports reaching a peak of 450 feet before we were led back down the rocky, rooty, slippery, muddy trail to the K2 leisure centre and, rather surreally, a final lap of the running track to the finish line.
Another point worthy of mention is the weird delay that happened shortly after we set off, when the field had to squeeze through a narrow opening into the forest. Anyone thinking they were doing the right thing by starting at the back had his common sense repaid with a delay (again, according to my watch) of 2:20 minutes.
And finally, my poor old toe. I was so worried that people would think I was making excuses that I’ve spent the last 48 hours announcing that it was absolutely fine, and wouldn’t be any handicap whatever. It wasn’t the main reason for my bad run, but I can’t dismiss it as having no impact. The truth is that I couldn’t bend it without pain, and this might not have been too big a problem if the course had been flat. But on this hilly, bumpy terrain, it did hurt, and I had to rapidly design a limpy gait to get by. It clearly didn’t stop me getting round, but it did cost me a couple of minutes — at least.
That’s the mitigation over with, folks. Mitigation is the posh word for excuses. While all these things are true, and did make a difference, the bigger truth is that today made me aware of just how much work I have to do to get back to a decent level of fitness. For that reason, this race was a great experience, and hugely worthwhile, despite the disappointment of the cold-light-of-day result.
I was still almost 16 stone this morning (221 pounds), and this is too heavy for racing. Looking back over my race stats (which I tend to do with one eye shut, in the hope that this will improve them), it’s the heaviest I’ve ever been for any race. I keep thinking about the salutary medicine ball moment, at Phil’s, a few weeks ago. If I could offload another couple of those…
If we focus on aesthetics rather than vulgar competition, this was, as mentioned, a lovely run. Once uncorked from the bottleneck, we were free to enjoy the simple, yet profound, pleasure of running, or jogging, or plodding, or just being, in a forest, in October, in England. The entire course, apart from the opening and closing lap of the all-weather running track, was bumpy and slithery underfoot. If it hadn’t been a race, it would have been far more enjoyable in a schoolboy exploration sort of a way. If I lived round here, I would look forward to including these trails in my weekly long runs.
The first mile or so is relatively flat, before we start heading uphill. I kept looking behind me, wondering where the Great Plodder was lurking. He was nowhere to be seen. This added to my confidence, and helped me relax. Perhaps he had done the gentlemanly thing, and stayed with his partner? Or perhaps – and this is what I really thought – his pre-race confidence was just bluster. He had tried to psyche me out, and had nearly succeeded. Ha! I was making him eat his words.
It was while still enjoying this smug thought that something utterly appalling happened. As I embarked on one of the steepest uphill stretches of the course, a section where the faster runners had double-backed, and were streaming past in the other direction, who should I happen to see, coming towards me, with a grin the size of a generous slice of Halloween pumpkin, but… the Infamous Plodder Himself.
My God! How had this happened? He was supposed to be half a mile behind me, and instead… instead he had popped up half a mile ahead!
He generously extended a supportive, congratulatory hand as we passed. My instinct was to extend a foot in return, and to cry out: “You cheating bastard!”, but I’m glad I didn’t.
For one thing, it would have invited further pain onto my gouty right foot. But also, as he was in rapid descent, I feared the consequences of the resulting earthward crash. At best, it might initiate an avalanche of tumbling runners which would have put an unbearable strain on the local A & E Department. At worst, the impact of an SP going to ground would give the Richter Scale something to think about. In this climate of public sector cost-cutting, could the nation’s emergency services cope with an earthquake in Crawley? Frankly, I wasn’t prepared to put additional pressure on the Exchequer in these troubled times.
Instead, with enormous reluctance, I nodded benignly in his direction as he passed, and even managed to produce an exceedingly watery smile.
Damn.
But jokes aside, I have to tip my hat to the great man. I didn’t expect him to do as well as he did, and he deserves to be congratulated. He finished a couple of minutes above the hour, and on a flatter, more standard course, would have been well below. Well done, SP. I shouldn’t make jokes about his weight either, as he was 11 pounds lighter than me today. Come Brighton, I hope that gap will have narrowed, along with the finishing times.
The race just wasn’t the same after that. I finally reached the end of the hilly loop and was able to start back on the descent. But my inner brass was no longer gleaming. The marshal who remarked: “Don’t worry, you’re not doing too badly” wasn’t being quite as helpful as he probably thought. I started taking walk breaks. The game was up.
Just two problems with the foot. Once, after the 7 km sign, sort of galloping along a downward, left-to-right bank, I heard a marshal shout behind me. Thinking I might have taken the wrong turning, I swivelled round, leaving my right foot facing forward. It meant the toes of my gouty foot being unexpectedly splayed and stretched, and it let me know it wasn’t happy. To make it more annoying, the marshal was talking loudly into a walkie-talkie, and not to me at all. And then a bit further on, around 8.5 km, I trod on a concealed tree root, bending the toe joint upwards. This also hurt. I must have started limping, because the next marshal I passed called out: “Don’t make it any worse – why not walk for a bit?”
So. The verdict. One one level, a disappointment — but I need to remind myself that it doesn’t matter that much. Deploying a bit of hindsight, it was silly to inflate this unexpectedly tricky run into anything more than a lovely autumnal plod through some delightful woodland. That said, the structure of the race gave it an edge that a casual run would never have had. If I’d run this distance on this terrain in this time as a standard non-race run, I’d have been happy.
Which brings me back to that question: what is a race?
