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!