Please say hello in the comments if you manage to get to the end, I feel lonely on here!! You can also tweet me: @scott_leach
My mountain bike attached to my new implement of torture/boredom- the turbo trainer
This week I have continued to battle with the rib injury I sustained last week with my epic face-plant fail, so my "running week" consisted of turbo-training, an ultra-running night and the European Team Championships in Gateshead. So let's start at the beginning.
The rib injury that I got by taking a quick face-down inspection of the floor at The Chevin last week is still very painful. A quick trip to the doctors confirmed that I hadn't put a hole in my lung and I left with some powerful pain killers. Of course, this left me wondering how I could keep up my fitness whilst I am unable to run. It seemed there was only one choice as anything that involved upper body would be very painful. An exercise bike. I don't dare cycle on the road as the jolting would hurt too much so I decided on a turbo trainer as seen in the picture above. For those of you who don't know, it basically transforms your road bike in to an exercise bike. An extremely generous friend, who ought to know better, took pity on me and bought me an early birthday present of an elite turbo trainer and very good it is too. I dislike cycling at the best of times, but at least I can do this in front of the TV with athletics/tennis/cricket to distract me.
INJINJI!! (Must be shouted in a kung-fu film style) Couldn't resist this new pair at Accelerate.
On Thursday night I made a trip to Sheffield to Accelerate, the best running shop I have ever come across. My main job involves me walking around shopping areas across the whole of Yorkshire and sometimes further afield. The one type of shop I never pass without going in is a running shop, and if it's an independent, all the better! In the course of my job I see a lot of running shops! I have grown pretty tired of listening to the total rubbish that is spouted by the "knowledgeable" assistants in the biggest chain (who shall remain nameless) so it was a real pleasure to meet Chris in Accelerate and hear him talk sense. The first thing that impressed me was when he told me that Accelerate only stock neutral shoes. Blimey!!
So, back to the point- the shop have started to run Ultra Running evenings and I attended my first one on Thursday. A short film about the Transvulcania race in Palma provided massive amounts of motivation to step up to ultra running and this race has now been entered on to my ever-increasing list of "must dos"
This was followed by a talk about the West Highland Way (WHW) race by John, a veteran of 11 finishes. The WHW is 95 miles long and is run in June each year. John explained the stages of the race, and then it got very interesting as we started to fire questions at him to find out his personal tactics and ploys for getting around such a long race. The best part was a story he told to us:
He was running through the night many miles in to the run when he ran past a house. In the garden was a row of big flowers. In between each flower he could see woman's face turning their heads backwards and forwards. In his exhausted and sleep-deprived state he could just about work out that it was an hallucination, but he tried to decided which bit wasn't real. The women's faces, he concluded, must be the hallucinations.
A while after the race he decided to revisit the spot so he could check on what he had seen. As it turned out, there were no flowers in the garden at all- the whole thing had been in his head. It just serves to show you what ultra-runners put themselves through!
Deb then gave us a talk on the Ultra-Trail Du Mont-Blanc. Debs explained that she was used to doing extreme events and had raced for 24 hours before, but never in a purely running race. She entered the UTMB on pretty much a whim and it had clearly been one of the best experiences of her life. She explained it with an excited enthusiasm that seems like it hasn't diminished despite the years since her race experience. She raved about the incredible crowd and made us all want to sign up right there and then, if any of us had the points required to enter it or managed to beat the incredibly quick-closing ballot for this now extremely popular event.
After the talks there was an open discussion on all things ultra including kit and training and many a good tip was picked up and funny story told. An excellent night that is soon to be repeated. You will not regret spending your evening there! I picked up a couple of things before I left including some more Injinji socks (I never race or run long in anything else now) and some Clif Bars which may look like squished up squirrel poo, but they taste great and are made from entirely organic ingredients. If they're good enough for Scott Jurek.... they're far too good for me, but I'll eat them anyway!
Gateshead international Stadium. that's Mo Farah leading the 5000m
Saturday found me at the Gateshead International Stadium for the European Team Championship with 7 friends and boy did we get lucky as the 2nd day on Sunday was conducted in torrential rain!
Mo Farah's outrageous run in the 5000m will live with me forever and I am pretty sure I will tell the story many times over, but back to that later...
The stadium proved easy to get to and was well set up. The lack of toilets and concessions stands inside had been thought about and extra facilities had been set up outside; all you had to do was get a free pass-out bracelet.
Our seats allowed us a wonderful view of the women's pole vaulting. And what an incredibly impressive set of athletic and, dare I say it, sexy women, they were too! Sadly our seats were a little too low to gain a great view of the 100m and the long and triple jumps on the other side of the stadium, but other than that, they were great. I was amazed about just how much was going on all the time. It was great fun trying to keep up with all the things being flung around the stadium as the track and field events over-lapped. You see much more in person than you ever do on TV!
We really had got lucky with the day I picked as we witnessed, amongst other things, Jessica Judd's fantastic winning performance on her senior début, the men's 4x100 team actually passing a baton without dropping it and Mo Farah essentially taking the p@#% out of a European field of athletes. If you didn't get to see it, here's what happened:
Mo set off slowly, actually at the back of the field for the first lap. He slowly moved up and then was content to sit behind whichever other athlete lead the field for the next few laps. A lap or so out he claimed the front spot with consummate ease, but it was when the bell went that I witnessed the most outrageous piece of running I have ever seen.
A split second after the bell went Mo literally jumped and started sprinting away from the pack like a startled rabbit. The crowd immediately and spontaneously jumped to their feet. He began to put distance between the rest of the runners and in seconds was already metres in front. I could only imagine how demoralizing that must have been to the also-rans in the race. Mo had been toying with them. The race was so easy to him he could just cruise along then blow the field away as he pleased. The final time was very slow for Mo which perhaps explained his tactics.
Here's the last lap on the BBC website.
Here's the last lap on the BBC website.
I had a brilliant day in Gateshead and can't wait to go to another meet there but I have to say, what a sad reflection of this nation's taste in sport that an amazing event like this failed to fill a relatively small stadium when the tickets are an incredible bargain at £17 each, when you consider a bunch of men-children falling about on a football pitch can command triple that and fill much bigger stadia. It's just wrong. Add to that the fact that this is the first time the championship has been held in the UK for 13 years and I am baffled as to the relative lack of interest in the event.
I could go in to much more detail but I am sure I have waffled long enough. I hope your running week has been enjoyable as mine turned out to be, despite the absence of actual physical running.
I know that too many of the 1000 views a month on my blog are from spambots, but if you've got down this far, please do leave a comment and say hello!
Twitter : @scott_leach
No comments:
Post a Comment