Getting back on the horse!

It’s been a long while – by my standards – since I last raced. I’ve been doing parkruns a plenty as they are a fun, pressure free, yet motivating way to get in a tempo run and to measure my fitness… or, rather, current lack of it. Due to my recent string of injuries and the resultant drop in fitness due to interrupted training, my appetite and nerve for racing have somewhat deserted me. Sometimes, though, you just have to take a deep breath and get back on the horse: feel the fear and do it anyway! (And I say this as a former horse-owner, addict and general equestrian nut who has taken her fair share of tumbles!)

If you are going to get back on the horse, it might as well be a horse that you like and know well. On this occasional my horse was the Templer 10 – an event I love and in which I have participated more than any other race. It is a scenic, 9.5 mile, flat off-road route along the Templer Way and through Stover Country Park and Hackney Marshes nature reserve. Having won it the two previous years, the pressure was most definitely on for me to perform again this year. That said, winning it the previous year had granted me a free entry to this year’s race, so at least that took the financial pressure off: if I had a disastrous race, at least I wouldn’t have to pay for the privilege and could look upon it as a free training run.

This was another Teignbridge Trotters organised race: always well staged events that usually culminate in top quality cakes and refreshments! The last time I raced properly was also at one of their races – the Totnes 10k in August – and that did not go so well. Again here, I had a free entry so I thought I might as well give it a go, but having had a month off with no running to rest my posterior tibial tendon, I had lost masses of fitness. So I wasn’t exactly expecting a scintillating performance, but neither was I expecting the whole thing to be a game of survival from about one mile in until the finish. The impromptu fartlek burst about 2 miles in, to escape a herd of stampeding cows, pretty much finished me off and I puffed and wheezed my way around the rest, actually being reduced to a walk in the uphill wooded section. I eventually dragged my out-of-condition body over the finish line 5 minutes slower than last year’s time and several places lower, to the sound of the finish line announcer trying his best not to sound patronising and referring to it as ‘a brave effort’. Not my finest hour and a definite confidence knock.

Struggling already, barely 1 mile into the Totnes 10k in August 2014

Since Totnes I have got my head down and got back on the training waggon. I am only now up to 25 miles per week, and haven’t touched any speed work or structured intervals yet, but I have been cross training hard and swimming a lot. I have recently joined the Exeter Triathlon Club and have benefitted from some proper coached sessions to improve my technique and breathing pattern, which I’m sure will help me with my running. Running-wise, I’ve been hitting the trails at Haldon Forest on the way home from work a couple of nights a week. That place is a labyrinth of narrow, twisty, technical trails and wider, straighter, compacted forest access tracks. You could easily fit 15 miles in without retracing your steps and it has options for a totally flat run, if you stay up on the ridge, or a mega hill that is 1 mile long if you drop down to the base of the forest. This will probably be my last week of being able to run in the light after work, but fortunately I have got to know it well enough to feel confident navigating a route in the dark, so I think the head torch will be making an appearance soon.

Back with the Templer 10 though, and I loved it! I have always liked this race, it’s just the perfect mixture of different terrains and scenery, which makes it go really quickly. My time was down on last year, to be expected, but I was utterly amazed, given the strong line-up in the ladies race, to come away with another win. I knew I had some strong ladies behind me and I don’t have any endurance to fall back on at the moment. We also managed to retain our Harriers’ team prize for a consecutive year, which was an added bonus. I had told myself that if Templer went ok and my legs came off it ok, I would run the Drogo. Unfortunately, between times, I picked up a stinking cold that was still bothering me on race day and so I had a dilemma as to whether or not to run. In the end, I decided to give it a go as it was actually quite comforting to know that if it went badly, I had an excuse to fall back on!

Start of the Templer 10, in Kingsteignton.

Tackling one of the many wishing gates on route, no time to make a wish as I went through!

Another 10 mile multi-terrain race, but, unlike the flat terrain of the Templer 10, Drogo is hills, hills, hills. 3 of them, all whoppers! 1800ft of climbing in total along uneven, stony and, this year especially, very wet and muddy tracks around the Teign Valley, starting and finishing at Castle Drogo. The start of this race always scares me as it’s a mad dash up the drive to get a good position, then try and hold onto it down a seriously steep set of steps, hoping that you don’t get shoved from behind by the lunatic fell-runner types who throw themselves down past you, hurtling down to the valley floor. If you don’t start fast you end up getting stuck in a queue for the bridge over the river 1.5 miles in; however, this doesn’t play to my strengths – I prefer to start steady and work my way through, but as the opening 2 miles are so narrow, this is not possible and you would struggle to make up all the time lost whilst waiting to cross the bridge.

Flagging and full of cold, having just climbed the final killer hill - Hunter's path - at the Drogo.

It was a pretty close race on the ladies side, with a competitive line up. The positions chopped and changed from the start. I was jostling for 3^rd and 4^th place for most of the way, overtaking a girl on the uphill climbs, only to be overtaken by her on the descents: she was fearless on the downhill and descending has never been my strong suit. Then, on the long flat stretch back along the river between mile’s 6 and 8, I managed to overtake her and another woman and made my way up to 2^nd. However, the last hill – Hunter’s Path – is a killer at the best of times, but especially so when you don’t have the miles in your legs (I have only been running 6 – 8 miles on training runs and Templer 10 was the only time I’ve been over 8 since June!). Today, what with feeling a bit under the weather anyway, I was a spent force by the time I got to this point; I got overtaken by a fast-finishing female from Haldon Trail Runners and had no way of hanging onto her: back down into 3^rd again! I had to dig very deep into my mental reserves to retain my podium place, just managing to hang on in there to cross a very welcome finish line! So, no, I didn’t win it – despite being given race number ‘1’ by the organiser (the ultimate kiss of death!), and yes, I was slower than the last time I ran it in 2012, but only a minute slower, so maybe the situation is nowhere near as disastrous as I thought. And once again, as at Templer, us Harriers ladies won the female team prize - smiles all round!

With my fellow winning Harriers teamies and our prizes. :-)

The best thing is that my legs have come off the race unscathed. Well, no, quite so; I have been experiencing that familiar and much-missed feeling of DOMS these past few days, on a truly epic scale. I guess without the miles in my legs to withstand it, those hills took their toll! But it’s a nice feeling and good to have it back: up until now my injuries have put a limit on me actually pushing the rest of my body to the point that DOMS is able to set in. It was nice to stretch out in bed on Sunday night with that satisfying feeling of having done something.

So, what now? Well, I have another hilly, off-road race coming up in December – it’s a new one for me and that comes with the advantage of there being no expectations on myself. Well, no, correction: no expectations in terms of a time; I would, of course, still like to podium if possible! And then, thinking ahead to 2015, I have a couple of races booked in, a 10k and a 10 mile. My main aim for next year though is to be ready to run a marathon again by the autumn, so lots of long, slow distance stuff over the coming months to get the miles back into the legs and to try to get them to the point that a marathon is a reasonable ask of them again…. like it used to be!