If you’d told me three years ago that I’d spend a cold, wet, miserable Sunday morning in February running around Hartshead Moor Services I would’ve wondered where it’d all gone wrong. Yet today that’s exactly what I did and I had a great time.
I was so keen to run Liversedge half marathon I entered the race three times; senility not so much creeping as galloping along there. There were extenuating circumstances, but they weren’t that extenuating. Wonder if anything else extenuates? I’d run from Roberttown before and if memory serves me well it absolutely chucked it down on that day as well. The weather was nowhere near as bad as had been predicted and it was fine when we set off.
My objective was to run as close to 1:30 as possible, but I had no real strategy about how to do that. Caught up to Claire from Eccleshill after the first mile; she usually beats me when she’s on form but her heart wasn’t really in it today. She still won the first prize in her age category mind. I pushed on and I just kept trying to hang on to the group ahead. I saw a fairly familiar club vest ahead; what may look like a great design in a catalogue looked like a jesters outfit to me and who wants to be beaten by a jester? You may as well run with a target on your back. I guess I’ll try and use anything to keep the motivation going and overtake while I’m still able. At 4 miles I remembered that I hadn’t plastered up my nipples. Nothing I can do except look forward to an uncomfortable few days.
After crossing the M62, there was a vertiginous downhill to the mile 5 marker and I really leathered it down the hill in the certain knowledge that we had to run back up later in the race. I got up the “hill from hell” without needing to walk; I must have kept up a decent pace as I didn’t think about walking and nobody went past me. I found myself on familiar territory – sixth leg of the Calderdale Way relay. Mixed feelings as I enjoyed running with Adrian, but I was by some way the weakest member of the team.
Keep myself concentrating by looking out for the mile markers and clicking the lap counter on the Garmin. Everyone else seems to have their Garmin programmed to automatically record mile/kilometre points, but I haven’t figured that one out yet.
There was a long slow drag from mile 9 to 10 that was really sapping and I get overtaken by a few on this bit. More or less downhill from there, but the wind seemed to be holding me up. I really struggled for the last couple of miles. I was only slightly apoplectic (can one be slightly apoplectic?) at “The Gray Ox”. Misspelling a pub name is just not acceptable and using an American spelling is even worse. The sign looked more like a pig than an ox until you got to about three inches from it. Definitely porcine (geddit)!
I felt like I was standing still for most of the last mile (I felt like I was going backwards for the rest of it). I picked my feet up for a dash up the cruel hill to the finish line. Thanks to Jo for being kind enough to say it looked like a strong finish.
I came 61st in 1:34:55. By one of those strange quirks I ended up with a prize for finishing 3rd in the MV50 category. I was over ten minutes behind the guy who finished 2nd in my category so I did feel a bit of a fraud. It was good to see Chris T out in a Hyde Park Harrier vest putting in a terrific performance in his first half. Thanks to Mick and Rob for their support around the course (and for looking after my yukky cap).
It’s a year since I started to blog about my first attempt to prepare for the London marathon (http://chrisdoeslondon.blogspot.com/). I feel a lot better prepared than at this stage last year, despite slower times at Brass Monkey and Dewsbury 10k. No races for a bit, I just need to get a couple of long runs in prior to the three local(ish) 20 milers.
Here’s a link to Liz’s Just Giving page http://www.justgiving.com/LizJones1
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