As you can see from the title, this one is a little shorter than the usual effort. Back near the start of January I picked up a niggle in left calf, which progressively got worse as I continued to train and race on it (who would have thought). Dropped mileage, rested, it got slightly better, increased again it got worse.
Until yesterdays sports massage. Turned out I had an extremely tight piriformis, which was sending my hamstring into spasm and doing weird things to my calf. Enter one sharp elbow, some pained giggling (I'm a giggler when it starts really hurting on the massage bed) and it felt a whole lot better! I had however sent a pleading email to the organiser to drop down from the 26 as I wasn't confident my calf would be either fixed or hold out (I had to maintain my unbeaten record against Charlie Sharpe!).
On to race day - an early start and a trip up with Andy Watson and Mat Needham (both from Erewash Valley RC - the club I belong to) arriving at 9:20 - just enough time to catch up with Ian MacNamee, Charlie Sharpe, Tracey Dean, John Danahay and Andy Horrabin and wish them luck on their race. Registered (race bib number 1 - no pressure there then!) changed and back to the start line for some strange posing and then we were off.
I could tell I'd had too long off running and a sports massage, the first few miles felt slow and laboured, and I watched as the first 3 runners slowly pulled away from me. It's a steady climb for the first 5 miles or so, breaking out to the highest point and a bit of a break from forestry tracks onto some open moorland with (normally) great views of Coniston. Not today, although I did notice that I had ice on my fringe. A bit cold out.
One short sharp climb later and I could tell my quads were shot from the previous days' massage - a bloke hammered past me and I was down to 5th. I kept pace with him for a bit, but he was too strong on the climb. A lovely bit of singletrack, then back onto the forestry trails again. Mostly downhill from here, with a few climbs which felt like hell on my mashed quads.
Caught back up tp the bloke who passed me - looked like he was paying for hammering up the hills too fast - then focussed on getting to the end as fast as I could. 11 miles gone, 12 miles gone, 13 miles gone, 14 miles gone, surely the end must be close...and there it was 14.5 miles later, 1:39 in 4th place. Not sure how far back from the podium I was, but 5th was 3 minutes behind me, and it was Andy Watson from EVRC having the run of his life.
A great day out and the first in my TORQ kit for this year - slightly disappointed I was off the podium, but happy with my performance (6:50/mile average pace) considering my lead up.
Thanks TORQ for my kit and nutrition!
