Tuesday 6 March 2012

Unzipped but doubled!

In terms of achieving my 'Marchvellous' race time I'm afraid I well and truly didn't 'zip up the man suit' as much as I thought I had!  There was I boasting that I had predicted a time 4 minutes less than my time for the same race last year and although I didn't particularly have a good race for one reason or another I comforted myself with the thought that I had almost hit my target - in fact just 22 seconds out having predicted 54:19 I finished in 54:41 - however, when I logged onto the Marathon talk site to log my race time I soon realised I had in fact entered 56:19. I'm not entirely sure what happened there, whether I got cold feet or made a mistake - who knows. I could of course send a whingeing email and beg for my time to be altered or.......maybe not!  So I will be penalised for going too fast when it comes to the end of the month and my total score emerges, well at least it's better than being too slow!

That aside I was pleasantly surprised that after a mad dash from Dewsbury back to Bradford I did in fact manage the 'double' even if it was made all the more dramatic as it started to snow! It didn't dawn on me until I got back that I had just 15 minutes to dash home, get a very quick shower, change and pick Paul up as promised at 11:10 to meet the rest of the runners at Morrisons at 11:20.  Only a few minutes late I was surprised at the amount of people who turned up in the awful weather.  That's team spirit for you!  The 1 pm YVAA race at Otley was much more pleasant than the town centre Dewsbury run despite both been run in relentless rain, perhaps it might have been the absence of running past some of Batley's hot spots - the Frontier and a myriad of different shops and mill buildings. It did feel warmer in the afternoon.  It also carried so much more of a team spirit as these races usually do - along with the Peco cross countries.  It's so much nicer when the team are there cheering in each runner up until the last.  We even hung around to cheer in an Idle runner and friend Anna.  Getting home tired and weary I had a long soak in the bath and made the rest of the day a PJ day, not that there was much of it left.

                                       The famous Frontier (formerly the Batley Variety Club!)

Next morning I was pleasantly surprised to find I felt really good.  I longed to run with club in the evening but alas it was the monthly 3 mile time trial of which I am usually chief timer. I do love it though being able to announce that the runners have run something like 4 minutes faster than last month, it's such an achievement to some, it's not an easy course and has countless roads to cross too. Maybe I'll try and get a short run in today at some point, if not I've got the lovely Gaisby Lane to look forward to for tomorrow's club run.







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