More sleep please, I'm racing

The plan was to get up at 3am on Sunday to drive 2 hours to the spectacular Garden of the Gods 10-miler, race 7 in this year's 16-race Colorado Runner Racing Seies.

But common sense - actually tiredness - prevailed, and instead I found myself chasing glory instead of series points as a late entry in the Sunrise Stampede at Longmont. The race was on Saturday, a mere 30 minutes up the road, and was TWO miles instead of ten.

All agreed this fitted in much better in my preparations for the British Masters 5k championship on June 22. But really, it was forced on me, as I haven't been sleeping well lately. Thursday night 15 of us went out for dinner after the evening track meet; I don't know whether it was eating late or the excitement of scraping under 2:30 for 800 metres, but I lay awake most of the night endlessly replaying the race. Friday night was my chance to make up sleep, but the early part of it was spent dealing with freaked-out cats who kept waking me up to deal with an intruder... a racoon who keeps coming through the cat door and helping themselves to their food. Normally we get the cast i early and seal the house, but they'd asked for a late pass to go to some party or something. Anyway...when Abby got in late herself, the thing started prowling round her while she was in the hot tub, so I got called out again.

We just got this "liquid fence" stuff to spray on some of our new "deer-resistant" plants that the deer, not being able to read the labels, have taken to munching on. The spray is a mixture of putrescent eggs and garlic. Casting around for something to see off the racoon, that came to hand. Well, it worked OK, but you can imagine what the deck now smells like.... but I digress....

So the Sunrise Stampede, yes. A mere two miles. The first mile, however, is almost all uphill. Now Kyle always runs this (and almost always wins his age group) in 11:08-ish. So I figured, 3 seconds behind him at one mile, should be in for 11:20 or so at least. Oh no. I went out fast just behind the usual gaggle of 15-17 year-old leaders, but when Hyle came cruising past in the left-hand gutter I couldn't get on his wheel. I tried to make up time on the downhill, but then we turned into the wind for a 400-metre straight, then turned onto the high school running track for one lap to finish... and by then I was stuffed. It WAS a hard day: Kyle got knocked back to 11:20 and I stumbled in almost 45 seconds down in 12:03. Not a good race by my standards, even if I did win the 55-59 age group. Kyle, at 51, was seventh overall -- everyone in front of him was 18 or under. (I was 12th).

Well... three races in a week, even if they are short ones -- especially if they are short ones? -- really takes it out of me. I need good quality sleep and lots of it to keep the recovery going.

And I was short-changed on the glory, too. I went up to get collect my hand-crafted pottery mug as the announcer moved on to "...and in second place in the 55-59 age group...Ric Rojas"... a short pause, "Oh that's Ric Rojas", he announced, "winner of the first Bolder Boulder"... and the crowd went wild. So I';m standing there like a lemon while second-placed Ric (13:29) works the crowd, revealing the mannerisms of someone well used to the celebrity spotlight. As soon as we'd sat down, a young runner came up to get his photo taken with Ric...ah fame!

Story of the day for the Rojas runners though was the fate of Susan Brooker. Susan is notorious for verbalising all those negative thoughts we all have, but try to choke down. I love running with her because she is always telling me how great I am and how crap she is, especially today, and how I'll do really well, but she won't...and so on, and so on. I fell for all this just once, when she complained how bad she was feeling all the way through a series of 400s at the track. I kept expecting her to die, but no, she was there right through to the bitter end pushing me to good times. Susan, now competing in the 40-44 age group, was a major marathon force -- and Olympic trials qualifier -- not so long ago. Most recently she was invited to run for the crack Athena women's team in the Carlsbad 5000. The invitation came late and she spent a couple of weeks telling us how unfit she was, before heading west and helping Athena to the team prize.

But on Saturday she excelled herself. After jogging round the course and pronouncing herself extremely worried about the hill, and stopping halfway through our three-minute AT run mid warm-up because her quads were aching so badly from the previous day's track workout, she had me totally convinced that this time she really was feeling SO bad that she was going home. The whole team got round her and convinced her just to run it for training. Yeah right. I found her on the infield at the prize presentation trying to hide the pottery mug they'd given her for winning the women's race -- in 13:01.