Runner's Words

It’s safe to say 2022 has been a bit of a rollercoaster on the old running front. January, good; February, bad. March, oddly successful. April, baaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

At some point not long after getting back from Portugal though it felt like it had all pretty much come back together. I’m not sure why. Was it the warm weather training? Was it all of the hills? Was it the 200 pints of Super Bock? Hard to say, but not long after returning I was a changed man. May’s Great Manchester Run Half Marathon was already in the bank by then of course and as we rolled into late summer it all started to feel back on track. The crap runs were becoming increasingly rare before finally, touchwood, disappearing completely. I was enjoying my running again.

Lunchtime jogs were back on the agenda thanks to a shift in job requiring more remote working. Breaking up the stresses of the working day with a couple of laps around the local parks for the first time since all of the lockdowns helped me get my running mojo back, and all of a sudden I was back to five or six day running weeks. Tempo runs, long and slow runs, interval sessions. Blink and it was 2020 all over again.

I hadn’t intentionally been training for anything, I’d just sort of fallen back into my regular routine of the last couple of years consisting of lots of ploddy stuff then a bit o’ speedwork on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’d even started hitting my local running track again which was a hark back to twelve months ago training for that bloody marathon, and despite generally feeling quite a way off my best I somewhat inexplicably started to take time off my 400m PB over the course of a fortnight or so, first a solitary second – albeit as part of an 800m rep, which didn’t really make sense – but then lopping a massive four seconds off on my next visit, going full tilt on a single lap. What was happening here? Was I, somehow, back, but even better than before?

It all meant that I bounded into the 2022 Standalone 10k on the crest of an unusual wave of confidence. For once, there was no Standalone curse, which I think might be the first year ever since I first started running it back in 2008. Unlike years previous with various friends and family entering and then a good % of them subsequently having to pull out, this year it was just me on the entry list, and I felt in great shape. At one point I thought 2022’s victim would be the car, with the Silver Arrow heading off to the MOT centre 48 hours before the race was due to start, but even her 15 year parts wouldn’t fall victim to The Curse and as she passed with flying colours I duly got behind the wheel and headed south.

It was another beautiful morning on the farm; bright, crisp and sunny. I don’t know why Standalone nearly always works out like this but I bloody love that it does and it was a perfect day to aim for a good time. It was going to be a hard one to know how to approach though. Did I aim to head out shooting for a PB and just see what happens? Or should I play it a bit safer assuming that – now four years older and the wrong side of 40 – I no longer had that kind of effort in me? Go out too hard on this race and the latter half along the undulations of Stotfold Road are an absolute nightmare, believe me. But then if I held back and missed out on something special by a few seconds – and I had history here with that – I’d be absolutely kicking myself. Decisions, decisions.

I decided to go all in. “Training”, however unstructured, had gone pretty well and unlike with a marathon, even if you do get a 10k super wrong, the period of suffering is relatively short. If I were to blow up then I’d just jog it home, down that last little hill onto the farm and that would be that. It wasn’t to be this time around. Better that than to have never tried at all and wonder what could have been, I reckoned. I lined up in my usual spot just in front of the sub-40 marker, ready for action.

This year something was different though. I felt a bit uneasy. The crowd of runners in front of me was distinctly thin, in fact with less than five minutes before the start I’d say it was basically non-existent. The 9:30am kick off drew closer and closer and I was staring at the prospect of actually leading the entire field away down Wilbury Road.

Seriously. Where the bloody hell was everyone? Runners kept filling in further back but they resolutely refused to stand ahead of me. Why was I standing at the front of the pack so close to kick off? Was I the elite? Where were all the club runners? I thought back to a friend of mine recently who – while admittedly being a good couple of minutes faster than me over the distance – had unexpectedly won a local 10k a month or so beforehand as all those closer to the 30 minute mark literally failed to turn up. Was that what was happening here?

My mind was racing, adrenaline pumping through my veins. I was suddenly more nervous than any race in recent history, even the sub three marathon attempt nearly twelve months beforehand. Was I in with a chance of a massive, massive result here? I’d only ever finished in the top 50 at Standalone once before and yet here I was, wearing my £7 running vest and a 10 year old pair of running shorts, my running number hanging off at a 45 degree angle and looking like a 1970s tennis player with my headband holding my unruly mop in place, staring down the gauntlet of potentially leading a field approaching 1000 runners away and off round this famous old course. Shit the bed.

Thankfully, right at the death a few more showed up and I began to feel more at ease. I was no longer tasked with being the pacesetter. The pressure was off. And then as always seems to be the way with this race, we kicked off exactly on time and we were on our merry way. It was time to see if I was still capable of getting anywhere near my 2018 vintage.

As soon as I set off though I realised I’d fucked it slightly by not making any sort of note of the pace I needed to hit a PB. If I were to go for it, I didn’t actually know how fast I needed to run to achieve it. Schoolboy error. All I could do was just try and run at what I felt was a decent pace and see what happens, but it was difficult to know what I was actually aiming for.

I actually had to look back over my Strava to try and write this up and it turns out that this approach actually worked very well and largely had me on target in the early stages, in fact I actually had a bit of time in the bank as we went over halfway. Shortly after that though the lack of strategy kicked in, or possibly the lack of proper training. Or possibly the four year gap since I set that PB. Either way, it unravelled a bit in its usual spot and I felt a bit helpless as a couple of runners disappeared up the road and I struggled on the constant up / down / up / down along miles 4 & 5. It all felt like really hard work and without an idea of how fast I should be running I didn’t really know if I was losing time or still on target. I strongly suspected the former.

So it proved. Time had slipped away from me somewhat at the crucial period and there would be no PB today. Even though I couldn’t confirm either way, deep down I think I knew it wasn’t to be. I hit the final downhill and flew past my Dad stood cheering me on which gave me a nice little boost into the final few hundred metres, and then after the dash across the grass up the finishing straight it was all over in 39:08, a full 50 seconds off that famous run.

Not a bad day at the office though, truth be told. Sure, I’d not been able to hold the pace I needed all the way around, but it was still an great result, running my third fastest 10k ever and – admittedly thanks to the slightly-depleted field – my best ever position at Standalone with 31st place. The fears about being an accidental elite had been well and truly dispelled as I’d finished nearly seven minutes off the winner, but that was all good and exactly as expected. Exactly as it should be. If you’d offered me all this back in April when I could barely run two miles without feeling like a parts of me would fall to pieces I’d have absolutely bitten your hand off.

Overall it was just a nice bit of glory on the back of a fairly average year of running. Lower mileage than last year, fewer races than last year. More injuries than last year. A couple of highs, a lot of lows. I’m on track for my lowest annual mileage since 2019 but things feel on the up and it was nice to finish on a bit of a high and sign off a pretty crap 2022 with something positive ahead of the next adventure.

And what an adventure it promises to be 🦄