Pre Race
written night before, post race written after race
Pre Race
I’ve just
climbed into bed after a shift at work, two trains and a bus home. I get up at
5:30/6 tomorrow for breakfast, bath and warm up, before leaving at 7:30. The
race starts at 9:30 but I want to be there in good time as I’ve never ran a
race before and don’t want to miss it or anything!
Without a
doubt, I’m nervous, but I’m more nervous about getting there, waking up in time
etc, and not about the actual race. I’m absolutely excited about the race. Once
we start off I’ll be pressing play on my ipod and starting on the song Keep
Your Head Up by Ben Howard, which will leave me bouncing.
I just want
to finish the race, but I’ve got a highly competitive nature underneath this
quiet exterior and would love to run under 60 minutes in a competitive race. If
I hit that it’d give me something to build on.
But for the
time being I am positively on edge, so I’d best try this sleeping malarkey as
I’m terrible company like this!
Post Race
Well, I’m
pretty knackered right now! I logged a time of 54:12.
I got up at
6:30 ( I was a little lenient on myself), had two hot cross buns and a coffee.
Set off about 7:30, got a little bit lost on the way and arrived at 8:30. We
arrived early, as advised, to find we were just to be left for an hour before
anything happened, which wasn’t great for me, feeling restless and all.
There were around
300 runners today, the vast majority of them what seemed to be very keen
runners, taking carb gels, drinking sports drinks, wearing numerous outfits,
including some showing up in shorts. It’s at this point I point out that there
was snow and ice etc around the course… shorts? Seriously?
Anyway, we
set off and for the first 200m the course was really flat, luring me into a
false sense of security. As I turned the first corner I saw the first hill and
started to realise just how bad this was going to be. These were very steep
hills, worse than what I recall from my last visit to Huddersfield
and I hadn’t trained for them at all. The first mile was horrendous, I just
couldn’t get my pacing right for these hills and I was struggling. Finally,
after that (and having to stop to tie my shoelace) I managed to find my feet
and got on the pace.
The course
was pretty much never flat, either inclines, which made up the majority of the
course, or steep declines. So I’d painstakingly slowly jog up the hills and
then use gravity to go flying down the hills.
Anyway, as
I headed back to the car my Mum asked me if I knew what day it was and I was
like ‘Yeah, it’s Sunday…’. Anyway, after me looking confused she explained that
it was my Dad’s birthday, which we figured out to be his 52nd. It
was all by complete coincidence, my decision to run at the last dates in the
month was made through more time to train. I’m glad it landed this way though.
Apologies if this blog is somewhat laboured, I am one sleepy boy right now.
Here’s some
changes I’m looking to incorporate in the next months training:
Cross
training (Swimming)
Sleep
Improvement (7 Half Hours, rise same time every morning)
Switching
training to the mornings
Cut down on
junk food and beer (though you’ve got to enjoy a few drinks!)
Lose more
body fat
Start hill
training (lesson learnt!)
Next Race, BARNSLEY !
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