Excellent pictures by Brian Smith

I've added a few images (retrospectively to old posts about events past) from Flickr taken by Brian Smith, at this point without permission - I like them. Tks Brian.

National Road Relay Champs

It was a perfect day. The sun was out, and I was feeling strong. I’d been pretty poorly lately – more so than I can remember being in a long time. I’d fallen off my bike (my ribs still hurt from that incident), a nasty cold kept me out of action before the Midlands, and since then I’d picked up a nasty stomach bug in Belgium that had me down for nearly a week and forced me to take a long period for recovery.

The first time I’d exercised my cardio system since the illnesses was Friday when I gave my commute a bit of stick. I was fast too – averaging 32.9km/h through traffic on the way to the station. I knew I was strong, but I could also feel that my legs weren’t used to the strain and seemed to have less capacity for lactate than before. Saturday would be interesting.

Saturday morning I got on my bike to get the groceries. It was good to have the opportunity to spin the legs a bit to loosen them for the run in the afternoon. At first I was a little worried because my legs did seem to be lacking sparkle; keeping up the cadence seemed to help – almost like a nice massage. I was feeling good.

The drive up to Sutton Park was lovely, sunroof open, good music and knowing where I was going to all helped. I still managed to get a bit lost, but it was no problem at all. I still had plenty time to ready myself for my leg.

The start was “busier” this time, so with runners in front of me I really needed to make a point of not letting the need to get ahead compromise my own race. I paced myself easy up the first hill; it was difficult and demoralising to let the light blue vest of the runner in front slowly creep away, but I was close to the red line and knew any harder would be too hard and I’d blow. Worse was when a fast spindly dude flew past me – I felt like I was just going to be going backwards the whole way. A bit of doubt crept in; did I go off too fast trying to catch the runner in front? Did that virus whack my form more than I’d thought? Would it have been better if I’d not cycled to Waitrose this morning?

“Concentrate!” I told myself, it was a bit like a moment from the film 'Wimbledon'. Quickly I focussed and concentrated on my footsteps and breathing. Soon I’d found I’d found a nice rhythm; I was feeling happier in my skin and confident in how I was setting my pace.

One thing though, I was definitely going harder than I had in the Midlands, everything was burning and I wanted one thing only: for it to stop. For that I needed to reach the finish line, so I pushed on hard.

The 5km went by very quickly – I think having run the course before helped, as did knowing the course and having much better weather. It was such an awesome feeling, knowing that I was going so hard, and that it was just about all I could do.

Reaching the final straight up the hill was great. The rest of the team was cheering me on, and it felt sensational pushing myself to my absolute limit. The line couldn’t come quickly enough, I felt near collapse and had to hold the railings to keep upright! (this pic is approaching the line)

I timed myself at 18’24”, but the timekeepers officially had me at 18’23”. At the Midland round I’d done 18’22”, so pretty metronomic then! Altogether, given my heavy and repeated illnesses, I’m pretty happy with the result.

As a team we managed 47th of 52 teams, and finished under 5 hours at an average of 3'47"/km - which is pretty decent I think - especially for a small club.

I’m much prouder of my 18’23” than the previous 18'22" – I was in bad form and it really was totally on the limit – there wasn’t anything left in the tank at all. What a run! Most of all it was an honour to be able to compete in the National Champs, and a very special experience.

Midland Road Relay Champs - Sutton Park

I woke up knackered on Saturday morning. Having been a bit anxious about the race, I had a very restless sleep. The week before I had a nasty fall off my bike on the way to work and bruised a few ribs on my left side which had made hard breathing quite painful. To make matters worse, I had also just got over an annoying head-cold so I really was having some serious performance anxiety.

Anyhow, while munching my muesli and screwing the spikes back into my XC shoes (for therapeutic purposes, I didn’t need them) I decided that what had gone had gone and all that mattered was doing my best out on the course. With that I hopped into my newly-acquired car, opened the sunroof and headed off to get some gas.

I pottered for a while and but soon it was time to pack everything up and pick up Bryan from the station. And so started the adventure, we blasted up the B-road through countless little villages (and 30mph zones) and then onto the M40 headed up to Birmingham.

The directions to Sutton Park were pretty confusing but, with the help of some joggers, we managed to find the right gate and the race area. We were pretty early for my leg, but it was nice to have time to work out how things worked and calm myself. Bryan was thankfully very patient as I know I can be quite pedantic about making sure I know how things work.

The weather was something quite perplexing. One minute it was windy and raining, fifteen minutes later calm and sunny, and then a few moments later sleet. When waiting for my leg there was a bit of hail, but it quickly cleared and I had some lovely sun for most of it.

Apart from lapping another runner early on, I ran the whole leg alone which made it tricky to pace myself. At about halfway some spectators shouted to a runner behind me. I was going fairly hard, but not sure if I was being caught, it gave me impetus to turn the wick up a bit more.

By now the ribs were aching a bit, but I was feeling really strong. I had that spring in my stride and my lungs were gulping and exhaling with mechanical precision. It felt brilliant. As I sensed the finish getting closer I notched the pace up and up until eventually I was on the final climb up to the line.

The hill was awesome. It was a pretty steep climb, not too long. Until this stage I’d just been nudging the red, but now was the time to bury the needle firmly in the red. The hill felt stupendous; although right on the limit, I still felt incredibly strong.

The run had felt great, but I’d started my watch late so I wasn’t sure of how fast it had been. Given the pain of my ribs, I started to doubt my time and was disappointed – convinced I’d run a mid-19. The times for my leg weren’t posted immediately, so I had nothing to disprove my suspicion.

It wasn’t until this morning (Monday) that I found an email from the Club Captain; we’d finished 18^th overall and I had run 18’22” – 23s faster than my target time. Even better, as a team we had qualified for the Road Relay Nationals in two weeks time!

So in the end, a performance to be proud of for the team “with all the boxes ticked”. As far as I know, the Nationals will be at the same venue and hopefully the same course.

The weekend promises to be quite busy and exciting – the following day (the 27^th) will be my first race on the Ribble – the Reading CC Spring Road Race. 80km around the Chilterns should be a great challenge and will hopefully play to my natural climbing ability.

As usual, I can’t wait!