In the first week of September, the great Scottish run took place in Glasgow. It was my first 10k when I took part last year, and seems as good a yearly benchmark as any. With a couple of weeks to go, I finally got around to getting a new pair of trainers that I could run in for more than 3 miles without painfully aggravating my knee, and worked on my pace. My previous time had been about 47 minutes - a time that I had set up to thrash. So long as my legs held together.
Despite being in the first group released, it was still a huge fight for position as we ran up the hill. Dodging and weaving, accelerating and leaping; getting space to run was tiring. Nevertheless, I got to the first kilometer marker just as my four-minute song ended - right on for my aims, and only slightly infuriating that instead of repeating that same song as a pace marker as I had thought I had set my player to do, it skipped on randomly. Oops. Oh well.
Nevertheless, I had marked out a couple of guys who I thought were pretty likely, and just kept with them as we trundled along. Not wishing to deal with the cramps of last year, I eschewed all the water pickups, and only started to crack a bit coming into the last 2k. With 500m to go, the guy on my shoulder started off, and I followed, which was my only really big mistake. We gasped, spluttered and crawled our way over the line as the clock ticked to give me 40:25 and 94th position. Good, but no sub-40.
The next weekend was Pedal for Scotland, a 94 mile route from Glasgow to Edinburgh - explicitly not racing. The wind was strong from the southwest, and the first 30 miles into it were tough. I had a little help from a chaingang for about a dozen miles, which was very handy since I'd buckled my front derailleur at mile 20 and was stuck in the big ring. The few climbs were slow, rocking ordeals, but the long flats with the wind behind were fast enough to be running me out of gears. I ran straight through on what bottles and gels I had to cross the pads as the fastest recorded time of the day, averaging about 20mph. It was emphatically not a race, but it was not a race that I happened to win.
The weekend after, it was Bute cycling weekend - emphatically a race. Or four of them. It was to turn out to be more of a learning experience than a triumphant emergence onto the scene, but I'll take that any day.
The hill-climb was a short sprint up Serpentine Hill - about two minutes of teeth-gritting and pedal-pummeling. I had trained on it a few times before, but never on my road bike - and, therefore, never with clipless pedals. Sure enough, despite all the warnings, I pulled up too hard on one of the hairpins, jumped my rear sideways violently enough to dislodge my chain, and wasted almost a minute getting it back on. I powered to the finish anyway, and, if I hadn't have lost the chain, I might have actually been competitive. But so it goes.
Next up was a 2-up team time trial on the 20mile loop around the island. Bolting on the tri bars, I teamed up with a random gent who, unfortunately, went out a bit too hard for himself and died half-way round. I don't think our time even got recorded, for some reason - though we put in a respectable enough average of 21.5mph.
The next day, the 10 mile time-trial. Given the number of full time-trial bikes with disc wheels, I knew I had no chance here - what I hadn't anticipated was that I wouldn't even be able to put in a PB. My time of roughly 27 minutes was far too close to average for my liking, and I couldn't even be bothered to correct the officials when they confused me with the next rider and
put me down for an even slower time. It was a wasted morning, and, as I struggled to reawaken my legs, was going to prove hugely detrimental in the APR that afternoon.
The wind was behind us as we set off in group 1 of the two-lap race, and I was surprised to find, as I tried early on to push to pace, that I had popped off the front. I had no intention of time-trialing for forty miles, so I sat up and let the group come back as they may. With the wind behind, though, I was flying, and they were a long time coming - we were practically at the hill to Mount Stuart before they caught back up. My heart had been racing, but I didn't feel like I'd been pushing that hard.
I maintained the effort, taking regular turns at the front, pushing things on, especially on the downhills when far too many people were sitting back and idling. I wanted things to splinter - to get a half-dozen in a breakaway and go for it. It wasn't happening, though.
About a dozen miles in, number 10 popped off the front yet again. He'd been marked as dangerous, but the group was just letting him go. I could feel the tiredness beginning to get to me, but I couldn't stand for this. I pulled for a mile or so up an easy incline, slowly reeling him in. Nobody wanted to take a turn.
With a snap, I was through.
Out of the back of the group like a shot, there was no way to reel them back in. More than a minute down at the turnaround, I time-trialled for virtually a lap, delirious with exhaustion, before a gent I'd met the day before finally caught me and talked me through a few miles. Back up to Mount Stuart, though, there was nothing left. There was no letting anyone go - there was just absolutely nothing to push with. I wheeled my way in to goodness-knows-what position and left it at that. I had a quick debrief with some of the more experienced guys, and learned my lessons. Can't wait to put them into practice.
The last bit of action this season was the River Ness 10k. My flatmate suggested this one to me, as a very fast 10k that would give me my first taste of a sub-40 time. It didn't disappoint. I took it steady and even, plummeting like a stone down the descents and holding a pace on the flat to come in at 37:55 and 41st position. I can go faster, without any doubt, but it'd take some serious dedication to break the top 10.
I might give it a shot, some day.
Good trails!
No comments:
Post a Comment