A New Year...Another Medal on the Wall

There comes a time, about one week into the new year, when you sit down and stare your new year's resolution right in the eye, and have a frank discussion about how you came to be acquainted. And whether or not either you or it have got what it takes to stick out a whole year together. 

My new years resolution this year I think would technically be disqualified from counting as a new years resolution. It is: to stop procrastinating and crack on with working towards 100 marathons, which as I'm some way to doing already, has nothing really new about it at all.

But anyway, disqualified or not, it was still a resolution. One which at 5.30 am on a dark cold Sunday morning at the beginning January (the morning of Another Medal on the Wall), as I sipped a strong coffee and nibbled thoughtfully on a piece of toast, caused a few doubts to creep to the front of my mind.

But I quickly pushed them back. The main reason being that Another Medal on the Wall is a 6 hour timed event around a 1.88 mile lap in the Hillingdon Cycle Circuit in Minet Country Park in Hayes. Therefore, a nimble bit of maths later, and it became apparent that to do a marathon, you would need to do at least 14 laps. Or, if you look at it another way, there are at least 14 opportunities to stop. And that is not the sort of race where there is any room at all to have any doubts floating around in your head, or I would be back in the club house with a hot cup of tea, feet up in a comfortable chair and snuggled by a radiator after 1.88 miles. And listening to some tunes, because Hayes is famous (well, it is to me now, since I read about it in the race instructions) for it's former record factory, which makes the name of the race make more sense. 

I tried to calm my doubts by reminding myself that my first trail half marathon training run in the Surrey hills the day before had gone well, and I had also done a bit extra by running to the train station, so 18 miles in all. I'd felt strong, and this morning I felt well recovered and even a bit confident in my ability. Ha! The thought immediately made me anxious; confidence is not my natural state, and whenever I feel confident something usually goes wrong, which makes me anxious about feeling confident, which defeats the object of being confident, I think. Anyway, other than making me feel very twitchy, writing confident so many times in one sentence has revealed that spell check changes confident to condiment, which is something that I am much more comfortable with talking about. "Don't wait, I'll ketchup with you soon!" or,  "let me mustard up the strength to climb this hill " or, "we must relish this good section of path before the bog, where we'll find ourselves in a right pickle".

Etc....

Anyway, my confidence in condiments buoyed significantly, I headed purposefully from Southall train station in the early morning gloom through an industrial estate peppered with patches of ice towards the Cycle Circuit. As I walked further, it quickly became obvious that my confident interpretation of the weather forecast as it being a warm sunny day had been an optimistic way of looking at things (point proved). By the time I made it to the registration  building, I was as chilli as a frozen margarita with extra ice and more ice on top. I pulled on the extra clothes I had brought to change into afterwards, ignored that fact that that meant that afterwards I was going to be even chilli-er (what a jam I would be in then, but it's no big dill really), had a hot cup of coffee, and it was thyme to head for the start line. 

And what a grate event it turned out to be. Ahem. We must put oil these puns behind us now, and lettuce focus on the task at hand.  

Until I got to half way I refused to think about how many laps had happened, and I found I was enjoying it enough not to be thinking about it anyway. I've had a long break from these type of events since last May, and I have missed the camaraderie about them, so it was great to see some familiar faces and make new friends, like back being a part of the big running family. The laps were out and back, so all of the time you pass people going the other way, exchange smiles and nods and banter about the course/ state of each other, so although the scenery may not be that interesting, I love these type of runs. There was an excellent checkpoint each lap, where your bar-code got scanned, one of the race directors shouted your lap number and something encouraging at you, you could grab a quick drink (alas, no margaritas), and a snack (see, ample opportunity for puns here, but I've restrained), and it was off for the next lap. 

Soon after the 7 lap point, my dodgy hip started playing up, which gave me something to think about for the next couple of laps, but after a few miles it settled down again. After lap 9 it was feeling fine and I felt good, so reached 14 laps with no problems. I was planning on going for the full 6 hours at that point, and was having a great time chatting to others about races etc, before a headache which had been brewing finally exploded and so I stopped at 5.33 hours, 33.7 miles and called it a day. I was pretty pleased with it, I enjoyed it, felt good (apart from my head) and it was even a slightly faster pace than I used to run before I started having problems last year, which is a combination of words that I haven't been able to say together in a long time. Hurrah! 

All in all, it's just another medal on the wall. But it's a good one, and from a great event. I hope to be back to some more of Running Miles events in the future.

And on that note, mayo you all have a wonderful day!