PECO race 5 - Esholt

This was the last race in the PECO series.  VARR ladies team are in the first division.  We’ve consistently fielded more than the minimum 4 women for the competition and collectively have shown real grit and determination through mud, ice, hills and more mud.  

I went to the race determined to run hard and help boost our end of season score.  Foolishly, I also went into the race having totally ignored my recent observations about resting properly between hard sessions.  The day before the race I had been to circuit training in the morning, spending an hour doing kettlebell work, shuttles and millions of squats and lunges.  That afternoon, I’d then joined a few of the girls from Eccleshill for a 10 mile road run, including running at sub 7 min/mile pace for the last half mile.

The race was two laps of a very beautiful route through the woods in Esholt.  It was also muddy and consisted almost entirely of long uphill drags followed by sharp downhills.  It didn’t look as bad as Nell Bank (race 3), but it was the hardest course I’ve run over.  Not helped by the fact that I had left my trail shoes outside the back door when I left home (luckily no one in Meanwood fancied a pair of muddy, frost glazed Mizunos) so I ran in a pair of gripless retired road shoes.

So, I was poorly prepared and knew it.  I decided I should just run hard from the start and hope that I had enough reserves to get me round.  To that end I pushed myself quite close to the front of the pack at the start line, although I made sure that Helen was able to pass me – I was relying on her to get a good position as VARR’s first woman home.

I found the first lap tough.  It was very slippy under foot, making downhills, which is where I usually gain a lot of places, a suicidal prospect in old road shoes.  There was a hill just before the end of the lap which just seemed to go on and on.  Every time I thought I had got the summit, some more came into view.  I was really relieved to get back to the start point and know that there was a level road section on which I could recover.

Except that the first few hundred meters of the second lap were different.  Instead of that lovely road section I had motivated myself up that horrific hill with, there was more muddy, hilly trail.  I was already tiring, as my legs hadn’t properly recovered from the previous day.  This change from what I had psyched myself up for was a really tough. 

By mile 3 (of 4.75) I was really hurting.  I lost concentration a couple of times, accidentally running off route to try to avoid the most treacherous footholds.  I was scrambling quite well up the short sharp hills, but the long drags were a killer.  I reached a low point about half way round the second lap and walked for a short stretch.  I picked up to a run again as I heard another runner approaching me, but I didn’t have much pace left in my legs.

I could tell from the sound of her breathing that the runner coming up nehind me was fresher than I was, so I was surprised that she took quite a while to pass me.  When she did pass me, she said ‘well done,’ and I was shocked to see that it was Khara.  Khara is a much faster runner than me and I had assumed that she had been ahead of me from the start.  Seeing her pass me made me realise I was further up the field than I thought.

The realisation that I might not have performed as badly as I thought I had helped me to push up the last long hill.  At the top, there was only a short but very steep downhill section to the finishing chute.  These last few hundred meters were, I remembered from lap one, very slippery and I knew my legs were too tired and my shoes too smooth to run it hard without missing the corner.

I glanced back over my shoulder.  There was no one within overtaking distance.  I shuffled down, still veering off the path at the bottom but at least not ploughing headlong into the spectators.  The encouragement on the VARR team just by the finish line was brilliant, and went some way to making up for my own low mood.

I finished 25^th, only one place behind Khara and 11 places higher than my next best performance in the league.  The rest of the team did brilliantly, including Dave McGuire finishing first in his age category and Ellie coming second in her juniors race.  Both the men’s and women’s teams finished top of the first division and the men will be promoted to the premier division next season.  It was a testament to everyone’s hard work that a lot of runners came back battered and bruised but still running, including Dearbhail who was given a bloody nose by a tree.

I felt bad after the race.  I couldn't think properly and was cold and shaky.  I suspect that my muscles simply hadn’t enough time to recover and refuel since the previous day and I was hypoglycemic.  An energy bar, a pint of orange squash and some pizza helped.   I was finally restored to humanity by a cup of strong sweet tea, confirming that it is indeed the nectar of the gods...

I have mixed feelings about the race.  I am very proud of our team, who without exception ran brilliantly.  I’m pleased that I managed to finish my own season with a much higher position than I thought I was capable of.  But I’m frustrated that I still haven’t learnt from my recent experiences and recognised that three hard sessions in two days is just ridiculous.

When you run, you are only as fast and as strong as your limiting factor.   At the moment, my limiting factor is being overtired.  It's getting to the stage where I can feel that I'm putting my emotional as well as my physical equilibrium at risk.  I push myself because when other things are stressful, I feel like I can use running to make me feel good about myself, but when I'm tired I can't run as well as I want to so I push myself harder.  Instead of lifting my mood it only exhausts me, which makes my performance and my emotional state drop off a cliff.  It's a hard lesson to learn that when your confidence is at it's lowest, instead of giving in to the urge to prove yourself you have to take a step back.