The last Jane Tomlinson (JT) 10k of the year crept up on me from behind this Sunday. I think it was planning on giving me a pretty serious wedgie but it only succeeded on twanging the band of my pants. Nice try JT, nice try.
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| The Minster viewed from the top of Clifford's tower |
As I've mentioned before, the JT race routes are always very carefully chosen to take in the sights of the area and of course York has sights that people travel across the whole world to see, and today, they would witness the magnificent sight of 4600 runners pounding the ancient streets. Well, ok, maybe about 1000 runners, 3000 fun-runner/joggers, 300 waddlers a few hundred walkers to make up the numbers.
But my story starts last Friday.....
My friend The Jaunty Hipped Girl, was bemoaning her running, or rather, the lack thereof, so I offered to help her find the joy by taking her in to the woods (Keep your minds out of the gutter) Worst case scenario: if she really annoyed me, there'd be somewhere to hide her bludgeoned body.
The excellent premise for her blog came thus: She has been reading books by ultra runners who often seem to mention that on their first outing running, managed only to get to to the end of their street before collapsing in a heap. Then suddenly, in the space of a couple of paragraphs, they're running marathons. Where was the in between bit? The struggling to run a mile?; the constant fight to swim through the tide of misinformation given to new runners; the injuries; the pain; the chafing!!
So she's trying to write that blog. All the way from couch, to wherever she ends up.
So far, there has been pretty much nothing but frustration for her. I won't go in to it all as that's on her very funny blog. I have tried to help her before, but my main contribution has been lending her running books and persuading her to go to the physio. This time though, I fared much better....
I decided to do the run in barefoot trainers as I need to do very short and slow runs in them at the moment or risk being crippled for a week.
The minute we set off through the Chevin I spotted the first of Debi's problems. She was skittering along the ground whilst barely lifting her feet, despite being a forefoot runner. "Bend your knees" I told her, "Bring them up"
"What, like this?" she said, beginning to bounce, "Like we're playing horsey?" She was of course, being silly, but I assured her that was exactly what I meant. A minute later, she told me it already felt better. A little later in to the run she told me that the discomfort in her calves had been greatly reduced.
The next problem was speed. She set off at faster then 5m/per k pace. Way too fast for her current ability. The obvious conclusion was that she very quickly got out of breath and had to walk. Not getting very far and having to walk has been her main cause of frustration.
Anyway, this all sounds like I am blowing my own coaching trumpet, and I am. It gave me a great deal of satisfaction to help!
And now back to narcissistic me.....The barefoot run was great fun on my part. We covered something like 3 miles (I might have cocked up with the GPS again so the next picture isn't totally accurate)
Of course, as it was my first barefoot run in a while, it left my calves a little on the sore side. I knew this would happen, and I decided that it wouldn't really matter too much at the York 10k as I knew that I wasn't going to trouble my PB, I was just going to have fun.
On Sunday morning at twat-o'clock, I picked up Jaunty Hipped Girl and drove over to York with my calves complaining every time I put my foot on the clutch.
Same as the last two years, the traffic started as soon as we left the York by pass but it really didn't take long to pull in to the vast and rapidly filling York race course car park. Last year I had had to abandon my car on the slip road and dash in to the bushes as the caffeine kicked in, whereupon I nettled the crap out of my legs. I suppose I should be glad it was just my legs that got nettled considering what else could have got it. This year I have reduced my pre-race caffeine hit and don't tend to get these problems any more. Phew!
Now I have a confession to make; although I know the science says that we store enough glycogen in our livers to fuel us for around 2 hours (depending on which research you pay attention to) and that sports drinks, gels, etc, in fact, anything designed to boost energy are a waste of time when you're only running for 40 minutes. I used to down a sports drink before any 10k race, my logic being that if my energy stores weren't quite full for whatever reason, then this would top it. Either way it couldn't do any harm. I know this is almost certainly me fooling myself and I know that it's almost certainly placebo effect, however, when I've run races without taking something to boost energy before a race, I seem to have run badly. So I've started having a couple of blocks of these before each race:
I find eating energy gels is like consuming liquid raw sugar and not very pleasant, but these taste like wine gums and I highly recommend them!
We walked to the race start down the back of the main stand to the Knavesmire, the beautiful park land that surrounds the race course. As usual, the JT village was set up.
And then we spotted it. Out it snaked, long and curving, disappearing in to the distance with seemingly no end. Like a leviathan, biblical in size, it inched forward whilst growing in length every second. It looked like it would never end and extended in to infinity. It was the queue for the toilets. Last year there had been a veritable abundance of toilets; for once, the actual amount that was needed for the size of the race. But obviously, convenience with your convenience is not something race organisers believe in, so this year they had cut the number down by at least half. Gigantic mistake.
Not a great start. Dozens of people were running off in every direction in to the bushes. The "Urinating in public" law was temporarily suspended for the day.
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| The York race route; Ooooooh, twisty turny |
The wheel chair athletes set off, then a couple of minutes later, off we went.
I was determined not to set off too fast this time. I had no idea if I had a sub 40 minute run in me, but I was going to see how it would go. The route took us around the defunct Terry's chocolate factory after passing back past the race course and I found I had dropped in to a reasonable rhythm, comfortably inside 40 minute pace. It felt fine, but I had to wonder if I would be able to keep it up.
Although I have done this race twice before, I rarely remember a route as I am too busy concentrating on not collapsing, so I had entirely forgotten that you soon end up on Micklegate, via a quick trip along the river bank. I was pleased with this turn of events as I know Micklegate to be a very long down-hill slope. Here we go, I thought, free speed! But no, we turned right off the street and jagged out around a couple of streets before rejoining Micklegate at the bottom to cross Ousegate bridge. Yet another sharp turn brought us on to one of the main pedestrian shopping streets, Spurriergate, which soon becomes Coney street and it was then, at exactly 5.5k in to the race, that I was well and truly chicked for the first time in a long timewhile.
And what a beautiful, glorious chicking it was....A vision of beauty appeared along side me. Oozing and flowing like mercury she effortlessly passed me, her natural dark red hair only adding to the vision. For the next 2 kilometres I was entirely distracted by her perfect running form. Honest, it was nothing to do with the short, tight lycra shorts she was wearing, I swear. It was simple admiration of an excellent athlete. 20 years ago if I'd have seen her in a pub...well.......I would have probably spent the night trying to work up the courage to speak to her and if I consumed enough alcohol to actually say hello, no doubt I would have been getting turned down sharpish. But still.
Soon enough we arrived at the world famous York Minster. Apparently this is some sort of building built to worship a magic sky faerie hundreds of years ago, when people were much more simple in the head. Whatever though, it's spectacular and a great sight to be able to run past. It's probably the only time of year you could do this without the danger of sending tourists flying in all directions like skittles.
On to Goodramgate and it started to get hard and I began to slow down. By the time we passed Clifford's tower I was talking to myself, trying convince myself to run faster. I mentally prodded down my body and found no problems, slight calf soreness excepted. Certainly nothing to slow me down. But wait, my lungs! They hurt don't they? But when I checked, no, they didn't really hurt that much. So what was I waiting for? I speeded up, but was it too late? I had put in a 4:21 kilometre, the damage to a sub 40 minute time was substantial.
I pushed on as we headed back down to the river bank to some easy terrain on the well made path. We crossed the river over the millennium bridge; it's gentle curve feeling like mount Everest by this point.
Then suddenly a very weird thing happened exactly as I hit the 9km marker. I was hit with a massive influx of energy. And I mean massive. I have never felt such a huge surge before and certainly not with 9k gone. In the space of seconds I went from desperately trying to cling on to my speed, to flying forward with ease.
I flew past a tall thin, bald runner from Kirkstall Harriers (I recognised the vest) who looked ridiculously athletic. He was clearly struggling badly, absolutely gasping for breath and rapidly going backwards. "1k to go" I said to him, "Keep it going" He managed to wheeze out an acknowledgement. I checked my watch and tried to work out what I would need to do the last k in to go under 40 minutes. Something like 3:30. No chance.
The final couple of hundred metres down the Knavesmire is really fantastic. The crowd is thick on both sides and for a minute or so, you can feel like a professional athlete. Sort of.
At this point I was now sprinting hard and making a lot of racket about it. A guy in a bright yellow vest was about 50m in front of me as I hit the straight. We had traded positions most of the way through the race. I was moving quickly enough at this point that I actually caught him. Amusingly though, as I drew along side him, he sprinted away, obviously not wanting anyone to pass him. It did make me chuckle. He's in the picture below.
As you can see, I checked my watch. For some reason I decided that my sub 40 minute time was on and kept the sprint going.
Jaunty took possibly my favourite running photo of me ever as I neared the line:
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More cheese Grommit?
I crossed the line in 40:08. I wasn't disappointed as I had got a lot closer to 40 minutes than I thought I would. My 8th kilometre had been the killer. I covered it in 4:21 followed by 4:12 for the 9th. The last k was my fastest of the whole race at 3:48 (38 minute pace if I had done that for the full 10k)
A few seconds after I crossed the line the Kirkstall Harrier who was struggling so much at 9k appeared, then collapsed on to the floor. He told me how he had been trying to go sub 40 for a long time and that he felt it was a psychological thing. I agreed that it had been with me to a large extend.
I finished 94th out of 4602 runners, and here's my result: 
Jaunty and I headed towards the stalls in the race village and to my delight I discovered that the massage tent had a free table. This was unprecedented! On I hopped; no waiting!
Next stop was the Sweat Shop stall. They sell off trainers that have been returned to the shop, often with little to no mileage on them. At the Leeds 10k I had spotted a pair of Brook's Green silence at the stall but had no money, so I was hoping to see them again. Amazingly, they were there and I snapped them up for only £30.
What can I say? I'm a patriot! :P
I love the simplicity of these trainers. No fancy systems in the soles etc. There is just mild cushioning allowing your feet to do what they are meant to do. Nothing simplistic about the colour though...
3rd stop was to pick up my extra t-shirt, the reward for having completed all 3 Yorkshire JTs this year. Amazingly, the York t-shirt is a really nice deep red colour, my first ever JT t-shirt that I will actually wear! All the others this year have been vile, luminous hi-viz colours that I just can't bring myself to put on.
Normal service was resumed when I picked up my extra t-shirt though, as it is the vilest of the lot. If I am ever hod carrying on a building site I will be sure to put it on.
Summary:
The run for all foundation seems to take one step forward and one step back. Finally they sort out the corporate and slow runner problem, but they introduce a massive new one with the toilet situation. Sadly, I now have 4 identical medals from the JTs this year, save for the colour of the ribbons. The red ribbon on the York one gives it the unfortunate resemblance to a Jim'll Fix It badge.
But that's it for the negativity.
The parking is great at the race course, quick and efficient. The setting is fantastic. The route, though very twisty, takes you past some wonderful sights. The race village was further enhanced by the addition of a cafe set up in a large tent. You are unlikely to set a PB with the inclines all over the course and the amount of twists built in, but maybe the amazing setting will inspire you.
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