Well I knew that today's race was going to be hard what with not running a single step for 4 weeks and, even worse than that, not doing a scintilla of exercise in the last 2 weeks; what I didn't know was just how hard! For some reason I thought that I'd get away with it on the back of some residual fitness and years of training but take it from me - if you take a month off then don't, whatever you do, make your first run back a 10K race (or a race of any sort for that matter). It's just not worth it; oh the pain!
Anyway this is how it went. As usual I put in a lap of the course as a warm-up and, on the whole, I didn't feel too bad. A little stiff maybe but at this point I figured that I still had it, that I could be a contender. Which is not to say that I went crazy at the start; not at all. In fact I seeded myself 20 or 30 bodies back from the front and began slowly enough that even more people came straight past me. As the first lap wore on though a sense of misplaced confidence began to grow within me; maybe I could do 40 minutes or so? Sure I could. Come the second lap I decided to push on just a little bit. Unexpectedly though just a few minutes later it all began to get a tad hard and I definitely wasn't getting any quicker.
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| There's blood, sweat and tears here you know |
In fact, as the graph nakedly illustrates, big, red warning signs started flashing up at this point and, like a car that's run out of oil, continuing was only going to lead to 'bad things' happening. Obviously I couldn't actually stop and call it a day; I just had to plough on, getting ever more sluggish as each one of my leg muscles queued to scream in agony and seize up. What's worse is that this pain was nothing like the 'good' pain that you feel when you're pushing your body to the limit and riding that endorphin wave. No this pain was the hard, clubbing, wounding pain of a nightclub bouncer in steel toe-caps; no respite and no favours.
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| Going... going... gone... |
Eventually the finish line heaved itself into sight but not until runner after runner had tip-toed past me in a light and joyful manner. Frankly it was a surprise to find many people behind me after such a shocking final lap. Be that as it may in the end I sneaked under 43 minutes with a time of 42:57 and that was enough to put me 74th out of 590 finishers. As for the question of how many of the first 73 were in my category, V40, I wasn't in the mood to check when I finished and I'm no more inclined to do so now! Some experiences are best forgotten.
Distance: 10.8 miles
Time: 1h 26m 03s