Armageddon: a reminder not to race in November

Posted by simon on 11/9/2006 on simon's blog

"Armageddon!"
The other guy desperately trying to warm up in the teeth of a freezing wind
had seen where we were looking: over at the Foothills, where the sky was so
black it looked like something out of Lord of the Rings.
"Is it coming this way?" we shouted back.

Ten minutes later we had our answer. It started snowing. Then it became a blizzard. Huddled together for warmth on the "beach" by one of Boyd Park's lakes, the 800 runners involved in the simultaneous 5k, 10k and Loveland half-marathon were screaming at the organizers to let us start before we froze.

People were breaking from the start line to get sweat pants and rain jackets from their cars. I was in two thermal vests; shorts yeah, but I'd taken the precaution of smothering my legs in 'warming' embrocation. But as the snow continued to pile up on our heads and shoulders, we decided we weren't going for sub-40 minutes as planned,
so we lined up in the 7-minute-a-mile section.... in fact, if it kept up, no one would start at all.

Luckily. as they say in Monty Python, "I've had worse".. Even when Gabino, shivering, asked me for the car keys, I wouldn’t let him – or me – escape. It suddenly dawned on me why I was feeling so gung-ho about it; everything was stunningly familiar... yes, this was a typical British cross-country race. But, hey, no ploughed fields to cross, no hills...how bad could this be?

Pretty bad actually...
we started faster than we thought we could; the pace just seemed so slow. After
two miles the cold was beginning to tell. It had stopped snowing, but it was cold and...well, hard... I was forced to draft behind a petite woman, who was steaming along at a steady 6:15 or so pace. "If I can just get to three miles...."

Gabino, in his usual hat, gloves, jacket and trousers (I swear he wears more clothes when he's racing than in 'real' life), was running alongside, pointing to where I should be on the road behind her, while simultaneously keeping track of the miles and pace -- I was forbidden from checking my monitor, this time out.

That’s because I usually spend so much time checking my pace, average pace, pace compared to last week's pace, heart rate, blood count, elevation, gradient, wind speed, leg speed, distance to next cup of tea and so on that sometimes I come to a grinding halt and he has to shout at me to start running again.

So... we get past about three miles and the tight pain in my calf that I'd
been noticing for a while suddenly leaps into my hamstring. It was like
being shot, and I actually lost my stride for a while. Eased off, picked
up, it came back. I tried refocusing on the wrinkle of skin on the girl's
neck -- it had started to fascinate me and was taking my mind off the
discomfort, how it moved as her trunk swayed as she ran -- but no good, I
had to ease off the pace and mentally work on relaxing the muscle...and the gap opened.
"If I can just get to four miles...."

"Come on!" says Gabino.
"My hamstring's cramped up", I stammered.
There was a pause of about five seconds.
"Yeah, mine too" came the reply.
Oh. OK, I thought. Well, it's not stopping him, I'd better just suffer like
a Mexican and get on with it -- it's obviously nothing to worry about.
So I got back on the job. Only later, I find out, that's not what he meant at
all -- it had coincidentally hit him right there and then, as well -- a
combination, we think, of the very hard surface and the cold.

With a mile to go, having got over the limping and the shivering, we'd
started closing on her again... when Gabino shouted out "four minutes more
running". I risked a glance at my monitor and realized we WERE somehow under
40-minute pace, despite the cramps, the cold, the wind... and the sun was
breaking through at last.... we could do it.

I started picking up the pace -- 600 meters to go...closing down on our
pacer... but then turned a corner and there was the six-mile marker. Ooops.
Confused by the fact that some of the mile markers had got blown away, I'd
gone too early... even worse, just as I closed with the girl in front, we
came to a fork in the road -- instead of running left for the 10k finish,
she went right -- she was doing the half-marathon! Bugger.
I felt a bit useless and unfit at that point...
looked at the watch -- 37 minutes or so -- NOW there is 600 meters still to go and my tank is empty and we're finishing into a headwind...

Well, the watch shows we did the miles in 6:00-ish, 6:09, 6:11, 6:05, 6:31 and
6:27.. that final .600 metres took 2:08...which somehow is 5:55 pace...which just goes to show you can be running fast even when you think you are wading through knee-high mud wearing a weight vest while a couple of the heaviest people you know have lassoed you with old inner tubes..

But, I got in in 39:21. Phew!

Mission accomplished... the last real race of the year...this was a never-to-be-forgotten November 2005: I am NOT running this race this year!

* BTW, I got 12th overall and second in my age group ... fittingly, Pablo Vigil won a nice fleece jacket for first place, and I got a pair of gloves...
they KNEW it was going to be bad weather!!!!