The Maritime Museum, close to the start/finish of the race
I was plunged in to a dilemma as always: I'm still a bit ill, do I run or not? And if I do, how hard do I go at it?
I was pleased that the chest infection seemed to reach its peak within a couple of days around Tuesday and was getting better, but there was a race against time to see if I would be ok for Sunday. On Saturday I was very close to being better, although I hadn't run at that point in 10 days. The conventional wisdom is you can run with a cold, providing the symptoms are above the neck, but mine were still below.
On Saturday night I experienced my first bout of insomnia in years so when I woke for the race on Sunday morning, I had had around 3.5 hours sleep. This wasn't the greatest race preparation I've ever had. Still, I was worried, after a week of illness I had no intention of running the race hard or trying to beat my PB, I had already reconciled myself to that fact.The poor night's sleep had done my chest no good and it remained 95% better instead of the 100% I had hoped.
Hull is my home city so I had been looking forward to a run here, but this year's pattern continued to mirror last year's as I had been unable to run this race full blast in 2012 after having missed the Leeds' half due to injury. Calf problems had stopped me from racing in Hull last year, instead I was reduced to a gentle training run, but I had been very pleasantly surprised by the the pleasure of taking it easy in a race. I was able to enjoy the crowd and watching other runners mid-race. I have to admit to the schadenfreude I felt as I jogged around in about 46 minutes whilst the people around me appeared to be killing themselves to do the same time. It made me appreciate just how far I had come in 2 years from when I was desperately trying to go under 45 minutes.
The Jane Tomlinson Hull route has been very carefully designed to take in the sights (And yes, Hull has sights, before you say it) The race village is set at the end of the magnificent Queen's gardens with the beautiful fountain, over-looked by the maritime museum and the modern BBC building. A fitting setting.
The start is on Alfred Gelder street, another wonderful setting as either side is dominated by imposing historic buildings.
Unfortunately, that's where the problems starts. Alfred Gelder street is very wide, so quite why the cordon at the start is so thin, is not clear. It's a very cramped start and faster runners are sure to lose time unless they push right to the front. The front section is, somewhat laughably, split in to sub 45, sub 40 and sub 35 groups. I say laughably, because at the Jane Tomlinson's, the cordons are ignored to a massive, massive extent. The race organisers compound this to a gigantic degree by inserting dozens, and I mean, dozens, of corporate runners right in to the front of the race start.
What this effectively does, is ruins the race for anyone wishing to run a faster time (Say, sub 45)
Some may call me churlish for pointing this all out of course. They will say that the Jane Tomlinson's are a "Run for all" It's run entirely in aid of charity and is about getting anyone and everyone running. And I love this principal, I really do, and completely support it, however, by messing up the start, this badly, for anyone wishing to run a fast race, they are alienating a huge amount of runners. Serious club runners, in the main, don't enter Jane Tomlinson races, because of these reasons. By not properly policing the start and by aiding and abetting slow runners to the front, the run for all series can't be taken seriously by the quick runners. This I think is a terrible shame. If these problems were rectified, and the corporate runners were placed in an appropriate place, club runners might start to take it seriously and the races would expand. This can only be a good thing for the charities in question, and no one else need miss out. In the end, there is no reason for slow corporate runners to be at the front, other than to pander to the big companies sponsoring them. If they feel it is totally necessary to keep this pandering, then surely a side-cordon could be introduced to prevent the corporate runners getting in everyone's way.
Rant over.
I arrived at the start line having queued for not too long a time for the loos, to discover the still-too-thin-from-last-year cordon, stuffed even more full of corporate runners than ever before. With the chest infection in mind I decided I would line up just behind the sub 40 minute line. I soon discovered that there were still dozens of corporate runners in front of me and that I would need to push forward or lose a lot of time at the start. There were so many of them, that I ended up in the sub 35 minute section to escape.
Then the day's real disaster happened. We were warned of a problem that would mean the race start would be delayed by 10 minutes. Luckily it wasn't too cold. 10 minutes later, however, a man appeared next to the race MC with a face like thunder. It looked like he was about to cancel the race. Instead, he announced that there had been a problem with a bridge and that the race could not go ahead on the proposed route. Discussions with the race organisers and sport England had come to the conclusion that the best thing to do, would be to shorten the run. 9k they said.
My immediate reaction was obviously of annoyance. An early Sunday morning start and a fair drive to end up not even running the full race. "No bloody point in being here then" I grumbled. Who the hell was responsible for this bridge? How could they cock up this badly? I'm glad I rethought this attitude later on, but for now, back to the race.
Standing waiting for the race to start I still hadn't decided how hard I would run and what time I would aim for. When the shortened route was announced I had no idea what to do. Then a great idea hit me- Why not run the first 5k really hard and try to set a 5k PB? I had never run a flat 5k before. My lungs would probably hold out for a hard 5k, then I could just jog the rest of the race.
This shot isn't just for effect, this is the path we ran up
The race started 10 minutes late and I had edged far enough to the front that I didn't have to side-step too many of the corporate runners and to my surprise I fell in to a reasonably comfortable 3:30 per/k pace. The route heads south out of the city center, through a new housing estate and on to the banks of the Humber. The route is flat, but it's also very twisty, so not as fast as a flat course might other wise give. Sadly, pretty quickly, my chest started to complain and I began to slow, but not by too much. At first it looked like I might go under 18 minutes, but the week's illness was having too much effect and I covered the 4th kilometer in 4:05. We came up to The Deep, the most successful of the UK's millennium projects and an iconic aquarium building. Another sharp turn and we were looking down Hull's millennium bridge, a foot bridge at the confluence of the river Hull and the Humber estuary. The 5k marker was on the other side of the humped, twisty bridge. At this point I had slowed down too much to knock a huge chunk off my PB, but I still stopped my watch at 19:26 around 20 seconds inside my record. Not too bad for a man with two bags of manure in his chest. I slowed to a walk for a minute to regain some breath, which must have looked very strange to the large group of spectators who had gathered at this point. I expected some shouts of encouragement "Keep going mate- you can do it" but maybe they were just baffled.
From that point the route takes in the Marina, Prince's Quay and the city hall before finishing where it started on Alfred Gelder.
At about 7k I was feeling pretty tired and was just wanting to finish, when another 2 girls passed me. I had run the first 5k with a woman on my shoulder that the crowd kept informing us was in 2nd place. The 2 girls who had just passed me, by my calculation, were in 5th and 6th. Suddenly, my friend Dom's voice appeared in my head, "I'm not letting a girl beat me" I shook it off. Told myself not to be silly. I had run my race, now I was just having fun. I wasn't in a good enough state to run hard any more. But still. Girls. Passing me. They sounded knackered too. Maybe I could speed up a bit, there wasn't far to go after all.
To my surprise, I found it pretty easy to up the pace and caught the two girls who had passed me quickly. I have a feeling they had spent quite some time chasing me down, so it must have come as a surprise to see me cruise past them. The course twisted and turned past the New Theatre, and we headed past the race village on Queens' Gardens and Alfred Gelder was in sight where the race would finish.
I will admit, I looked behind me at Queen's gardens to see if I could spot the girls and to my, admittedly very sad, satisfaction, saw that I had lost them. A sizeable crowd was gathered at the finish and as I was on my own I was pretty certain the race MC would give me a shout out, which he did. He also seemed to think I was sprinting home, I wasn't, but my sad male bravado and vanity kicked in and I decided I would make it look fairly good by speeding up. I crossed the line in 36:30, which pretty much told me the revised course had been even shorter than they thought it was going to be. I had turned my GPS watch off at 5k so I wasn't sure. Other people confirmed the course to be 8.8k. Considering I had taken it very easy after 5k and the chest infection, I had to be pleased with that. Of course, I wasn't, my 5k should have been quicker. Something else to aim at.
Afterwards I chatted to another engineer (my bachelor's is in mechanical engineering) about the bridge problem. We started off by complaining about how the engineer responsible for the bridge had failed to check in time that it was working. Then as we talked around the subject we began to realise that maybe no one was at fault. The bridge in question is in constant use - it's the entrance to a very large marina. It was probably in use right up until the race, which means it probably failed very close to the race time. Either way, it's probably enough to give the benefit of the doubt. Afterwards the organisers gave a sincere apology and a substantial discount for next years run to all the day's entrants. A lovely and generous touch I thought.
The medal this year is a much more substantial and professional looking model and the t-shirt is a tech shirt for the first time, so no complaints there. The design for the front of the t-shirt is excellent in my opinion, although the powder blue colour probably isn't quite to my taste.
In the aftermath of the race I have, as usual, spent time telling myself I should be perfectly happy with my run. Had the run actually have been 10k I wouldn't have been able to run it hard, a 5k was a good compromise. And despite my illness I still set a PB.
This weekend it's rugby league in Manchester, then cricket at Headingley on Monday, so no running for me.
Hopefully it will give my chest a chance to recover. If you're running this weekend, all the very best!
Ok, I admit it, this shot wasn't taken on Sunday morning, I'm just showing off my photography skillz
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