Curate's Eggy

Brass Monkey today, and a race that I normally love had been rather worrying me for the last couple of days.  The niggle in my calf was bothering me, but not whilst running - however the worry was I'd be putting more strain on it in a HM, which runs the risk of it going properly.

The solution was to ice it yesterday, then smear it liberally with Ibuprofen gel and warp it up in a tubular bandage at bedtime.  The option of "not running full pace" wasn't really considered, if that's what you were thinking...

Anyway - Rich's gout has played up again, so he didn't show, and Murph was citing lack of training and overwork for his forthcoming crap performance, so once I'd made half of North Yorkshire aware of the problem with my calf I thought any hideous time would be well understood to be a blip and nothing to do with me still being a bit of a biffer (at c7lbs over ideal weight).

On the start line I was surrounded by speedy looking Ilkley Harriers.  Henry, Paul and Steve Coy were all looking fit and fresh from some very fast intervals on the track.  I decided to let "Afterburner" O'Looney zoom off and run my own race.  As the hooter went all my loyal clubmates buggered off into the distance, and I was very quickly all by myself with the red and green vests so far ahead I had to try and remember what sort of shorts they were wearing to work out who was who.

Having looked at Henry's post on his blog where he gives his splits it's not surprising I was left behind.  He ran his first 5k in 18:42 - I was 26 seconds, or a good 115metres at that speed, behind - and his second 5k was also 17s quicker - leaving him 41 seconds ahead after 10k - 180metres at 19m 5k pace.

I was fine for 15k and held my pace steady, catching the lads up a fair bit and at least being able to work out who was who by 8 miles.  I went through 10m in under 62mins, so whatever my mates were doing I was running quickly for me.

After 10m things started to unravel - and it's hard to tell why.  I didn't feel particularly under pressure and my HR behaved itself, climbing by only 2 or 3bpm to 158 or so - maybe it was because I found myself between groups, and I also got into that "I'm not going to catch them" mode that meant I didn't push on as I could/should have.

In the end I finished with 81:34, a 30s PB, and was only 5 seconds behind Henry on the line, 14s behind Paul and 19s behind Steve - and on the chip it was even closer.  So they were definitely coming back - so who knows?  With a bit more effort I might have caught one or more of them, but then again with a bit more effort I might have pulled a calf muscle - which behaved itself immaculately and didn't hurt during or after the race.

83rd place out of 1,550 finishers, and a PB that suggests sub-3 should be achievable - what's not to like?