Muddy Shoes
As you may be aware from my previous post/ the small amount of promotion that I’ve done on Facebook, I’m running two half marathons over the course of two consecutive weekends, primarily as a challenge for myself, but also with the intention of raising a little money and awareness for Amnesty International. I will get the shameless plugging out of the way now – my JustGiving page can be found via the following link: http://www.justgiving.com/ki11ingtim3. Please give whatever small amount you can afford to this worthwhile charity, and hopefully in recognition of me giving up my time to do something that I think is a little bit beyond the call. So that’s done with, now onto the interesting bit – the story of the first race!
The John Austin Half Marathon was an inaugural event this year, in support of the Oakhaven Hospice Trust. Funds were raised via fees and donations from runners and attendees. It was also a first for me: My first trail half marathon. For the uninitiated, trail running is the sort of hardcore preserve of the more mentally touched of runners, providing, in the abstract, beautiful views, absence of traffic pollution and pleasantly soft running surfaces. In the less abstract, in the early spring, trail running is wet, muddy, hilly and in the New Forest offers the occasional surprise equine hazard. Thus was John Austin for me.
I decided to run this race upon being given a flyer at my previous half marathon in Gosport at the end of last year. Somewhat naively I decided that an off road route through the New Forest in March would be a pleasant diversion from the usual daily tarmac abuse. It seemed, idealistically, like a wonderful idea to encourage myself to use some of the local towpaths and woodlands for training, not to mention forcing me into a little hill running too. Therefore, I set out, in one of the coldest Decembers that I can remember to engage in a distance running program that took in early morning runs, the Kennet & Avon Canal, local hills a-plenty and a crash course in running on snow and ice. Things did eventually thaw a little in January and February, and I was able to engage the right gears to really produce some excellent results from my longer and shorter training runs, improving personal bests and building greater strength and confidence with some of the more challenging elements of running.
On Sunday morning I clambered out of the car and enthusiastically jogged the mile to the start line with notions of personal bests and the glory of a sprinting finish flitting through my mind like a cascade of gems. However, as the race began and the first mile lengthened into the second and then the third, I quickly felt the dawning realisation that my confidence in my training, dedicated as it had been, may have been a little misplaced. For this course seemed to be a hill…a very, very long hill, that albeit not steep or dramatic in any other way, was gradually sapping the life from my limbs. This monumental, if gentle hill continued in a principally upwards direction, in fact, for the first six miles of the race.
Having reigned in my aspirations for a personal best, and instead resigned myself to “a respectable finish” by mile seven, I was glad when “The Great Hill” levelled out into a flat track that was part of an old airfield complex. With my pace, and my pulse quickening, I resolved to make up some lost time, taking time only to sip a little water on my way past the station, waving to enthusiastic spectators like royalty (I do enjoy hamming it up).
The game was very much back afoot. This was more the sort of running that I’d been expecting – rough surfaces and the occasional puddle and root demanding more concentration than a road, and I was just beginning to look forward to the promising downhill to complement the earlier uphill when my feet sank into the bog that mired the entirety of mile nine, and I realised that I had yet to taste the harsh derision of this course. Yes, mud there was aplenty. Coarse, sticky and boggy wet mud, and all other types inbetween. Sliding mud, and mud that didn’t even look like mud until grass yielded to shoe and shoe sank with foot and leg into, you guessed it, more mud.
Yet that was but an entree, the main course of the poisoned chalice presented itself at mile ten, following a sharp prolonged decline, after which the narrow path, if it could be so called, erupted into a series of five crushingly, soul destroyingly steep hills (with plently of mud) spread over the next two miles. I ran the last of these at little more than walking pace, vaguely humiliated, although slightly comforted by the encouraging words of the female marshall who chatted alongside me pleasantly for half a mile or so. She mentioned something about a railway bridge round the next bend, which proved to be the case, and found me utterly lacking in any enthusiasm whatsoever. Bridges on running courses have won my eternal contempt before now, and as I gripped the handrail for fear of toppling on my way down, I cursed Brunel’s infernal contraption under my breath.
What followed was the joy of knowing that the path back to Brockenhurst College led to a victorious lap round the sports field and an end to the day’s exertions. For strangely, running a full ten minutes behind my PB, covered in mud and so exhausted that the best I could muster was a half-way decent running pace for my finish, victorious was how I felt. Victory; that I’d stayed on my feet, that I’d run the whole way, that despite what I now realise was woefully poor preparation for an off-road race of this intensity, I had stuck it out and won my medal (and Freddo The Frog funsized Dairy Milk Bar!). In short, I hated every single minute of this race, and for that reason I can honestly say that I loved it.
