I could sit here and make excuses for why I was late, such as unadvertised roadworks, slow Sunday traffic, being given four different directions to the registration place, stopping to go for a wee before collecting my number, but all they do is take responsibility away from myself. I arrived with enough time to collect my number at the start of the race had I known where to go, but once the Wild Goose chase was complete all I was left with was a twisted knee, after running into a rabbit hole, and frustration from being told that I was unable to enter the race.
To rub salt deeper into the wounds I was stuck in my car for five minutes whilst I waited for the Fun Runners to run past before I could eventually drive back to Lincoln. The 30 minutes or so car journey was filled with the venting of a lot of anger and frustration, best summed up in the above gif. The omens were there from the minute I woke up and my Garmin watch had completely died. I thought that maybe the battery had simply died, but it failed to respond when I plugged it in and 10 hours or so later is still not responding.
Once I got back to Lincoln and had stopped sulking I still needed to run to make up for being unable to start the race. So I opted to take advantage of the situation and run a half marathon instead, not before disposing of a banana which had essentially exploded in my bag all over my wallet, phone and mp3 player after the frantic run around earlier looking for the registration place.
I've placed a lot of pressure on myself this year in terms of all the running and fundraising. I'll touch on this in more detail in an upcoming post, but there reached a point last year when Jenny and myself felt so frustrated and hopeless with the situation that we found her health in that I decided to take action and do what I could to raise awareness of her condition, in the hope that it will some how ease her situation. At the moment I'm finding myself spending any time where I'm not either at work, running or looking after Jenny, trying to raise awareness of my fundraising challenge and scouting for potential future races. This pressure transfers to my races too, where I almost always try to run each race faster than the last, or run a harder route, in the hope that it will attract more attention and encourage sponsorship.
For the most part, general tiredness and frustration aside I seem to be coping ok with this strategy. Today, not so much. I appear to have had a minor falling out with common sense, it's safe to say we're not talking. So still full of frustration I decided to take my one good knee and run 21km tackling as many hills as I could, with only a 500ml bottle of water for company. Dehydration hit me fairly quickly and without my watch I had no idea of how far I had ran or what time I was doing it in. I was relying on my phone's GPS to give me some idea, but checking that every now and then was almost more hassle than it was worth.
After stopping to grab a litre bottle of water from Tesco with about a mile to go on my run and subsequently downing it, before then hobbling on in the direction of home. Once home I headed for the freezer to grab an ice pack (or in this case frozen fruit), to try and appease the damage I had potentially done to my knee.
Thankfully it doesn't seem too bad at the moment, the true test will be when I get up tomorrow. In the meantime I will spend the evening looking for other races to run this month that I might actually make to the start line on time.
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Distance: 21.12 km | 13.12 miles
Time: 02:00:25
Average Pace: 05:42 min/km | 09:11 min/mi
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View my run:
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