Dryderdale Dash

Hamsterley, Sunday, October 18, 2009

“There is nothing like a race, nothing in the world”

I haven’t raced much this year. In fact, until yesterday I hadn’t raced since early July and for me that’s a very long time. Since then, I’d done most of the club handicaps, had ran around county hall car park and up North road but “there is nothing like a race” for finding out just how fit you are.

I set off on the 5 mile trail race in Hamsterley yesterday (the Dryderdale Dash) at my old pace i.e. the one I used when I was fit. However, I could only keep this up for about a mile and had to revert to a ‘Bob Graham shuffle’ – a pace I used to use on mega long distance stuff. But even this felt too fast and I had to fiercely resist the temptation to walk up the hills. As my rivals began to disappear into the distance I felt very alone and began to realise that there were more runners in front of me than behind (although the field only consisted of 12!).

This started me thinking about my training over the last couple of months and I realised that you can’t expect to blast out like wot you used to do when you’ve been on the ‘Old Speckled Hen diet’. While this might seem possible when you’re poodling around Durham its no good in preparing for that moment in a race when the red mist descends and you want to chase some skinny bald bloke in a Crook vest to make sure you’re the first V.50.

As you will have gathered, the moral of this sorry tale is that you can’t expect to run fast without putting in the hard graft and avoiding the beer, and the toughest test of whether you’ve done that is in a race – however long.

Note: The field of 12 consisted of 4 Striders who finished in this order: Tom, me, Susan & Jan.

… and from Jan Young

Dry, sunny, crisp autumn morning; fabulous autumn colours on the trees. Just right for a swift 5miles in the forest. Tom Reeves and I wore Elvet colours, Sue and Geoff Davis wore NFR colours and along with 7 other runners received a can or bottle prize, parking fee and mug of tea included in the entry fee. Enjoyable hilly run. I felt no pressure, happy to be last in; Martin from Crook AC following me round efficiently removing the course markers.

(Visited 45 times, 1 visits today)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.