For you and I are past our dancing days

It was the last of the Yorkshire Veterans’ Athletics Association Grand Prix series on Sunday and I turned up to run with the other has beens. Actually, you don’t have to be that old to be classed a “veteran” in the athletics world – 35. Must seem pretty ancient when you’re young, but most of the runners in this series don’t look like veterans to me.

I hadn’t really expected to run having tweaked a calf on the previous Sundays’ PECO cross country. I didn’t run at all in the week that followed but set off tentatively for the Saturday parkrun and found no pain at all. I was in full winter gear having expected to go slowly so had to hastily remove gloves and rain jacket when I found I was moving freely. I picked up the pace and provided a thorough test for the legs by the end. Managed just over 21 minutes from a pedestrian start, so was pleased with that.

I’d enjoyed the PECO race, but didn’t really consider it to be cross country. This was more like it though; squelchy mud, gates, stiles and narrow tracks. We started by running one and a half laps round an athletics track and even I’ve learned that this means that the organisers want to get the field spread out because there are some narrow bits coming up. I headed off as fast as I could and arrived at the first bottle neck reasonably far up the field. Not so far that I was killing myself to keep up, but I wasn’t frustrated by being held up either.

For the second race in a row, I settled in behind Mick from Eccleshill but it was pretty clear that this wasn’t the Mick of last week. No longer the mild mannered gentleman he’d turned into ….. The Hoganator. When he took off and dodged past other runners I held my ground as his pace was too hot for me. I maintained a steady trot and only had one brief moment of anxiety; after twenty five minutes the faster runners came bombing back towards me and I had a horrible thought that maybe it was an out and back and the race was further than I’d thought. Perhaps I should have looked at the map in registration. Turned out to be just over five miles and I came in about 50th in 38:33.

Was I first lady home? Nah. I’d bumped into Karen Pickles before the race so all bets were off. If I can get within a minute a mile of her then that’s the measure of whether I’ve done ok. Came in one place ahead of Marisol though so things are looking up.