After 45 years...

it felt strange to be, finally, re-starting my competitive running career. This was Sunday, January 4th, with the Delamere Dash, a 10k Trail Race combined with a 2 mile fun run. Getting up at 7 am on a Sunday seemed wrong, especially at the end of the Xmas fortnight of lying in as long as I wanted. It seemed even more wrong looking at the frost on the car, and remembering that the weather forecast that I'd seen was for -7 degrees overnight. Driving up to Cheshire and I've got major league butterflies, not improved by having trouble finding the car park, and then, when I got parked, seeing all the other competitors.
Hundreds of them (I spotted one number in the 500s), and all looking so much more - well, professional, than me. Got my number, pinned it on, all the while feeling as if everybody was nudging everybody else and muttering words to the effect of "What DOES he think he's doing here?" Follow the crowd down to the start (a mile walk!) - a light dusting of snow has started - and get to the start 15 minutes early. Doing a bit of self-conscious stretching, everybody else seeming much more at home with this, certainly I was the only one in a pair of Matalan cheapo jogging bottoms, an old rugby shirt, an original Buff done up to keep my ears warm, and a pair of kayaking gloves. One guy who looked about seventy was just wearing shorts, singlet and gloves (somebody joshed him about it not yet being British Summer Time), and he was jogging to and fro to warm up - but he was warming up faster than I was going to run! Finally I spotted a couple of guys whose getup looked about as amateur as mine - but they were probably taking their kids around in the fun run.
Time rolls around, and we get the pre-start speech, and then we're off. No gun, just a one-two-three-go.
I'd made the tactical masterstroke (and psychological blunder) of being near the front for the start. Tactically, it meant that I didn't have to run fifty yards just to cross the start line. Psychologically, it meant that I was mixed in with a lot of people who were faster than me. In previous endurance events, I've started relatively slowly, and then come through the field as they tired, and that feels good. Setting off at my "my aim is to avoid finishing last" pace, I was subjected to every man and his wife (and five-year-old son) pelting past. After about a mile, the fun runners followed a track off to the right, and us serious athletes (sic!) carried straight on. There was a ten-year old lad about twenty yards ahead, and it was only at the last minute that he veered right. For a moment I really felt as if he was taking the mick!
Steadily, I found myself slipping further and further back in the field as, one by one, other runners passed me. Not quite as frequently as in the first mile, but at a steady rate. By about three miles, I'm starting to re-pass them, though, when we hit a downhill stretch, and I just let gravity take me, only to see them pass me again on the uphill. It's also starting to get hard, and I'm having to push myself, especially on the uphills. One guy, just in front of me, kept slowing to a walk and rubbing his hamstring. Eventually, I pass him on one of his walks. He sets off again, and passes me again. I pass him on a downhill, and he comes past me again. Finally, I asked him, as he caught and passed me again, if he was determined not to let me beat him. He agreed. Apparently, I was keeping him going. Did I look so amateur that he was ashamed to let me beat him? We're still side-by-side as we pass people who've already finished, and are telling us it's only a couple of hundred yards, and I go for the big finish, and leave him floundering in my wake. Not only that, I make up about twenty yards on another guy, and pass him about twenty yards out. I hear somebody, a marshal I think, comment about my sprint finish.
It looks as if, at my level, you're expected to put all your energy into tottering over the line! I was also pleased that my time was about 55 minutes (I'll have to wait to see the results for a better one than just looking at my own watch), which is about 9 minute mile pace, a big improvement on the 11 minutes that I've been taking in training. So, I've raced over a distance nearly half a half-marathon, and very nearly my target pace.
Before the race, queueing for the toilets, there were a couple of young women in front of me, dressed in serious looking kit, talking about Personal Bests, and where they were running last week, and what conditions they prefer to run in, for all the world like serious athletes. So I'm feeling good, quite emotional, while queueing for some orange squash, when I see one of the girls finish - some way behind me. Quite encouraging!
I still feel as if I look an impostor, but at least my time would have finished me about 180 out of 212 last year. Altogether a good result.