Still Running (weakly). Issue 45

PAST – inspiration – My first competitive (adult) race was on 7thApril 1976 – 48 years ago! It was the Surrey County 10,000 metres race walk championships on the track at Battersea Park.

25 laps of a 400-metre track is not the most congenial introduction to serious competition, but I got round (and round and round) in 1:00:46, a time I would be pleased to run now!

It was a hot evening and the vigorous upper body movement of the race walking action caused my glasses to slip down my nose repeatedly, until I chucked them in the long jump pit just after halfway!

Race walkers are a supportive bunch – the pack mentality of a minority sport! – and many of them encouraged me (as they lapped me and afterwards!) Ray Middleton (1936-2023, RIP) of Belgrave Harriers and Great Britain – Commonwealth silver medallist in 1966 – came up to me at the finish and said, “Aye, you walked well, lad.” Words like that stay with you!

PRESENT – perspiration – Tom Evans certainly perspired at the World Cross Country Championships in Belgrade. The 2023 Western States 100 miles winner came 49th in the senior men’s race, an outstanding display of short distance form from a man whose best distance, as he said afterwards, is “100km plus.”

And he summed up his achievement neatly by saying, “It’s pretty cool to compete in the most competitive 10km race in the world (World XC) and the most competitive 100-mile race in the world (Western States.)”

FUTURE – suggestion – Whether you’ve got a marathon in the near future, or any other race for which you’ve been training for a while, don’t bugger it up in the last week or so!

The last piece of your carefully assembled jigsaw of long runs, stretching, nutrition, tempo runs, recovery, hydration, speedwork, hill-work and gym-work is no work!

It’s hard to taper, I know. You feel like all of that lovely fitness is slipping away, but you will not lose anything – or gain anything – in the last two weeks. What you can do is undo all of the good work by rearranging the loft, relandscaping the garden, playing football with the kids on the Friday before the race, or simply by failing to plan for race day and having to dash to make the start.

A really good race needs a hundred things to go right; a bad race needs only one to go wrong.