wanted more!
Crediton Crunch Multi-terrain race: this chap got to the puddle first and got the best (driest!) line, forcing me to go wide and get wet!
My first ever track race! The Devon County Championships 5000m
When I wasn't able to race, at first I missed it like hell, but after a while you get used to it and almost become fearful of it, as you don't want to go out and deliver a below-par performance. In many ways, I miss those early days of being new to the sport, new to the area, and being an unattached athlete. Nobody knew me or expected anything of me; I was incognito! I could either do well and sneak in under the radar, or do badly and nobody would notice. I'm not saying that I am in anyway 'one to watch', far from it! But on the local running scene, when you compete a lot, people do get to know you and know what you are capable of, and there is this indirect pressure to perform. It works both ways: I do it with other athletes. You see the same names on the start list and the same faces on the start line and you subconsciously start to calculate a predicted finish place for yourself based on past experiences of competing against these people. You don't query whether or not they are in the same shape as last time, whether they've been ill or injured: you expect them to run as well as they did last time you raced them. With me, I always tend to lack confidence and underestimate myself and this leads me to predict a finish position much lower than where I usually end up. That's why I remained as an unattached runner for almost a year: because it took me that long to convince myself that I was good enough to join a club and that I wouldn't be a total embarrassment to myself or to them! When I signed up for my first marathon, my main goal was not to come last! I estimated a finish time of around about 5 1/2 hours. I in fact ran over 2 hours quicker than that and came 2nd, but still I didn't think I was in anyway a decent runner.
Anyway, where all this wittering and waffling is leading is to say that, despite all of the progress I have made since taking up the sport in 2010, part of me still feels like an erroneous guest in the company of far superior athletes and that I really don't deserve to be seen as 'stiff competition' and a 'pre-race favourite'. I find this attention rather unnerving as it can only go one of two ways: either you do manage to deliver (no big deal, they expected it of you anyway), or you fail (probably a bigger deal to me than anyone else, as failure is not something I entertain in my life). Just tonight, in an online group for the Roseland August Trail Race that takes place on August 17th, in commenting on a photo that had been posted of the race trophies captioned 'Who's favourite to win one of these?', a runner from Cornwall had typed in my name! I was a little bit shocked to read it. Don't get me wrong, I'm also flattered - thank you - but why me? Above all the other runners? I know what a nightmare year I've had on the injury front. People think you are 'sand bagging' when you say, 'Oh, no, I'm struggling with injury, so I won't do that well this year'; but I'm not! When I say that, it's in genuine belief that I won't!
Realistically, I probably shouldn't even be doing the RAT this year. I've had to drop down from the 20 mile to the 11 again - frustrating in itself - but even that is going to be a tall order. Just a glance at my training diary tells me that I am grossly under-prepared. The last time I ran the distance I will need to run next Saturday was on 10th February, at the Exeter Half Marathon. Since then, my longest run has been 8.5 miles, and I've only been over 7 miles on three occasions. Since May, my longest run has been 6.5 miles. My highest mileage week since February has not surpassed 20 miles. So I am really not just 'bluffing' or being falsely modest when I say that I am by no means a firm favourite for the win this year! But the one thing I can say is that I wouldn't be toeing the startline unless I intended to give it a damn good try! I am one of the most determined people you could ever meet and what I lack in physical strength I more than make up for in tenacity and sheer bloody-mindedness. I also seem to have a remarkable ability to block out and run through pain... which is not always a good thing! So I may well end up doing better than I expect: it will either be that or I will end up wrecking myself beyond belief and being air-lifted off the cliff path! I don't do things by half!
So anyway, back to May. It was all going well. Too well. So well that my 18:25 PB at the 5000m and an 18:50 clocking at the Killerton parkrun meant that I thought I was in good enough shape to go for a sub 38 minute 10k PB. This is a goal I have been chasing for a long time. It is my only PB at the major distances that has stood since 2011. All the others got overhauled last year, but this one still eludes me. I am beginning to feel that I may never get it as circumstances always seem to conspire against me. I either time my fitness right but pick the wrong course, or find the right course but whilst I am undergoing a post-holiday fitness slump! I have come close to a sub 38 on 3 occasions (38:04, 38:10, 38:06), but still not got there. Very keen to have another crack, I researched 'flat', 'fast' courses in May and June and came up with the Poole 10k on June 2nd.
Devon County Track Championships, 5000m: 18:25 for 2nd female overall and 1st senior female.
Since May, I have had the benefit of being officially coached by the very talented local athlete and all-round-good-guy, Gordon Seaward. Gordon has been a huge support to me for a while, having got to know him through his involvment with parkrun as the chief timekeeper, so I was thrilled when our informal little 'chats' and 'advice sessions' became something more permanent and official. On Sunday 2nd June, Gordon drove me up to Poole and the plan was for us to run around together. Gordon is a vet 60 athlete but one of the best in the country: this year alone, at 61, he has run a sub 39 minute 10k and an 18:10 5k; he's no slouch!
There was some stiff competition at Poole, with a Kenyan lady heading the field and the amazingly talented vet 40 athlete, Emma Stepto from Cornwall, also on the startline, along with Helen Dyke and a string of other sub 40 minute ladies. Unfortunately, the race had a 2pm start - never the best for me, I prefer to get on with it in the morning! - and it was a particularly hot day. By 2pm, the sun was beating down and I knew it would be a tough ask to get a sub 38. But Gordon hadn't driven me up there for nothing: I had to go for it. I went through the first mile in 5:45m/m and it all went down hill from there. The course was 2 laps of a very large lake near Poole Harbour and there was a particularly stiff headwind on the exposed promenade section between the lake and the sea. This really slowed my pace down and, when I finally turned out of it, I was confronted with a long, slow, uphill drag up to the start / finish / halfway point, which further impacted on my speed. So, as I went through 5k, I was already adrift of my target pace. Things deteriorated rapidly from here. Whilst I had the speed over 5k to do the time, I didn't have the endurance for the 10k to match it. Doing Parkrun every week had certainly helped me to get my fitness back, but at only 5k, it did not help my speed-endurance much!
At this point I started to lose heart. I was hot, uncomfortable, struggling to breathe, and I was only half way! Poor old Gordon copped for an absolute earful of negativity! "Urgh, I hate this", "We're off-pace; we can't make it", "Arrcgh, only 6k, you've got to be joking. Geeeees!". He was struggling too but yet he still found the energy to encourage me and lift me up. "You're doing fine". "Yes we can". "Stop being defeatist". "Focus on Helen, reel her in". This last command was about the only one I managed to fulfill; I did manage to overtake Helen Dyke with about 1 mile to go, but I think that was rather because she was having an uncharacteristic off-day than due to any scintillating, 11th-hour bursts of speed on my part!
In the end I managed to 'hang the hell on' and finished in a time of 38:34: not the sub 38 I wanted, by a long way, but given how utterly crap I felt from about 2k in, I'm highly amazed that it was even under 39! Also, I don't personally think it's the fastest of courses: the stretch along the sea is very exposed and you run into the direction of the prevailing wind; there's also a nasty, long uphill drag on each lap that further saps your energy. Positives were that it was superbly well organised and, even though I only finished 4th, I won £50! However, that £50 would soon be spent on yet more physio and treatment as the race aggravated my achillies yet again. I didn't really feel it in the race but I sure as hell felt it the next morning when I took that tentative first step out of bed to find that I couldn't even walk on it. This time it scared me more than ever as I hadn't even felt it coming. It went from being totally fine and pain free to totally wrecked and agonising without me feeling a twinge.
The finish of Poole 10k: not a pretty sight! But then, I probably looked like this most of the way round!
The following week I had the Yeovilton 5k penciled in. I was really hoping for a PB here as I knew that I was capable of bettering my 18:25 with the right conditions. I rested my achillies for a whole week and approached the race with the thinking that if it is wrecked, it's wrecked already and it's going to need loads of time off regardless, so I might as well hammer it tonight and get a PB out of it. These thoughts were echoed by Gordon, who said to me on the startline, 'Enjoy it; this will probably be your last one for a while'! And he was right. Even doing strides in the warm up I could feel it and it got progressively worse throughout the race, but I was dammed if I was trashing it for nothing. This fueled my fire even more and I pushed on harder and managed to overhaul the young female runner who had beaten me in the first round and I crossed the line as first female in a new PB time of 18:15.... but at a price: I couldn't even walk after.
We're now 2 months on and I am finally back running again, but steadily. No speed work yet and although I have done a couple of races in the past 2 weeks, I have just tempo ran rather than flat-out raced them. The positive thing is that my referral for an ultra-sound scan on my achillies came through at the R. D. and E., which I had last Thursday. The scan revealed that I do have tendonopothy, but not a severe case. It's not vascular and there's no serious scaring of the tendon. I'm going to have a course of electro-shockwave therapy, which the doctor reckons will sort the problem. After struggling with it for so long, I daren't allow myself to believe that the cure is as simple as that, but I'd like to hope that it will do something to alleviate the problem. When I think what times I have managed to achieve this year, particularly over the 5k distance, on the back of virtually no proper training, I am confident that if I could be injury free for long enough to put a solid block of training together, I could easily achieve that elusive sub 38 10k at some point. Fingers crossed, as I've had enough injury troubles in 2013 to last me a life time!
