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Sunday 28 June 2009

Dilemma

8.20am. Have woken up after a terrible night's sleep with a very sore tooth and a rather swollen patch in my mouth that made my breakfast difficult to swallow. Am thinking abscess!? Really stuck now whether to stay behind and try and find an emergency dentist or take the trip to Manchester and do this 10k race. Why do these things always happen at the weekend? This couldn't be worse timing!
And Toothy Tales of Torture...
16.45pm. Well, this Platt Fields 10k being the only road race planned for a while I set aside the tooth ache and went to Manchester to race instead. The dentist's answer machine message advising of the £115 call out fee was an additional motivator to try and live with the pain. I'm now less sure the race was worth the toothy sacrifice as we parked up at Platt Fields in shimmering heat and stifling humidity. The race was 1 small and 3 large laps around the park perimeter and incorporated the Northern Vets 10k champs. The 3 of us (me, M and old club mate Sally M) were all preparing our excuses; panicked by the heat and humidity, we all resolved to start out steady and just hoped we could get round in one piece. I was feeling less than fresh when 12pm arrived and prepared myself for a tough time on the start line but remained hopeful to be up in the prizes; by this stage thoughts of a decent a time had gone out of the window. Anyway, I think its safe to say that the race was absolute torture from the first mile. I'm not good at running in the heat and today was a mixture of baking stretches in full sun interchanged with hot, suffocating and humid tunnels of vegetation hell! Hope you're getting the sticky picture..
I ran a pretty cautious first mile but the splits just went downhill after that and I finished well down on what I'd hoped to do with a final time of 37.11. The other two had an equally tough time with Sally finishing 2.5 mins down on her last 10k time and M feeling so bad on this airless and stifling course with his dodgy chest that he had to stop 2 miles in. Times for the day were generally down by 1-2 mins for most so am trying hard not to freak out at my final result.
Reflecting on the race, the biggest challenge was to keep going, I was very close to stopping in parts, especially on this multi lapped course and quite a few didn't make it through. I was relieved to win the ladies race and I've some very nice vouchers to show for it, I also managed 10th position overall and came home with another impressive trophy for the NVAC Champs V35 prize. I'm so glad its over though, Summer racing is too hard.

5 comments:

kate said...

excellent result despite all the excuses ;) hope the tooth is mending.

Anonymous said...

Well done RB - another amazing victory, I'm very impressed. I do like the strike-through on your plans for completed races - I may copy you!

kate said...

no posts does this mean the tooth is winning! hope not :)

ultra collie said...

not a bad position given the dental adversity you were facing ;)
are the vouchers for cake by any chance? or just boring sports ones!

Runningbear said...

Thanks for the toothy sympathy. I'm good now thanks all and just glad to have an elaborate excuse for my rubbish run!

Got some John Lewis vouchers!? Unusual race prize but am told I can buy as much cake as I want from Waitrose with 'em (jealous Kate?).

Hope you're feeling better UC?

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