This morning Scarborough woke up to beautiful sunshine, with a little mist left on the ground from a cold night. It might even turn out to have been one of the last good days of the Autumn. I checked out of my B&B and ambled down the winding path to the Spa complex, and found I was in a converging crowd of people wearing various amounts of lycra, and more often than not, an athletic club vest or t-shirt. There were many of those people I wrote about earlier - the long-legged beasties with vast lung capacities, the impossibly fast runners. It occurred to me that I might be slightly out of my league - this was a proper race. For runners. Not joggers and plodders like me. Not for people with wobbly bits.
I climbed up the steps from the promenade and checked my bag in at the Ocean Room of the Spa, and got my timing chip to tie onto my left trainer, then went to find the toilet, and found myself at the end of a very long queue. Everyone seemed to be in one club or another. Then I noticed that there were a few more normal looking people who were wearing club tops: people with wobbly bits, and ordinary length legs, and my revelation today has been that ordinary people join athletic clubs. It never occurred to me that improving runners might join for encouragement, development and companionship rather than to always be the winner, and it's given me some food for thought.
On the terrace above the Sun Court, people were doing all sorts of warm ups and team photos, and going through their statistics and what they wanted to achieve from the run. Silly times kept wafting towards me - 45mins, 50. The winners were expected to be in within 31 minutes: impossibly fast. When I was asked, in the application process, what time I'd complete it in, I optimistically put down that I could do it within 65 minutes. My calculations took into account all sorts of variables: the course was supposed to be flat, out and back, and I've been training on a circular and fairly hilly route. My last 10k race time that counts, the Jane Tomlinson in June (because I walked for a substantial amount of the Temple Newsam 10k) was 1.08.57, and I was probably around 14 and a half stone at the time, so I reckoned with a fair road and a following wind, at 12 and a half I might shave a few minutes off. I knew I was being hopeful though. In training for the last 2 weeks, no matter how far the course, I've averaged 1.09 at the 10k mark. Surrounded by the athletic clubs, I thought I would probably be left trailing at the back.
The crowd moved down towards the start line, where a band was playing, and local press were bothering people for quotes. Eventually someone with a microphone addressed us. We had a brief clap in remembrance of Sir Jimmy Savile who died yesterday at the age of 84. He was famous for was his love of running, years of fundraising through marathons, and his love of Scarborough (here is not the place and now not the time to air my true feelings about this man). The warm up was pretty rubbish. The crowd couldn't see the demonstrators legs because she was up on the terrace, and we were on the promenade, so as far as we were concerned she was just waving her arms around and squeaking at us to do things we couldn't quite understand, thanks to terrible amplification. I'd gone through my usual routine on the terrace, and so I just kept topping it up with a few stretches, and most people around me just got on with their own stretches instead of paying attention. When Perri Shakes-Drayton, up and coming Olympics competitor, came to set us off and give us a few motivational words, we couldn't hear her either, and so stood mystified while she giggled down the mike at whatever she had just said. And then, at last, we were off!
As always there was a crunch and a hustle to get to the start line after the timer had started, and it took a minute or two to get on to the official course. Crossing under the start banner, I pressed go on the stopwatch on my trusty old phone (my fancy new one has a stopwatch function but it's not as good). We could still hear the band up to about 1500m out, then there was an almighty racket which turned out to be 3 blokes in halloween costumes, with a drum, a guitar and a theramin. I like theramins, they're cool, like stetsons and bow-ties, but for all that's good in the world, if you're going to get one, and play with it in front of other people, then PLEASE learn how to use it! Some members of the Beach Boys were turning in their graves. I think the pack speeded up at this point, maybe that was the idea?
I don't recall much as we continued out along Marine Parade, through the crowds of morning seaside tourists, out along the sandy promenade, where the team of guys dressed as firefighters overtook me, until the pace car came into view coming in the opposite direction. It was displaying a sign with 20minutes and a few seconds in lights, and the first few runners, all genetically more similar to giraffes than humans, came pounding after it. There was swearing and disbelief at first, between me and the lass I was running next to, then we yelled encouragement at them. We chatted for a bit, and then I realised that I was finding it difficult to hold a conversation, and that I was running faster than I would normally, so I slowed my pace down for a bit. The sun was hot, it was later than I normally run, I was hungry, my team night out with work on Friday was still lurking, I'd not slept as well as I should... there are any number of reasons why I wasn't feeling as comfortable as I usually would at around the 3-4k mark, and I began to worry about making it all the way round.
I grabbed water from the table at the 4k mark at Peasholme Park, and ran through the grounds, and then back out onto the promenade, running parallel to the beach until a hairpin bend doubled us back on ourselves. Mentally, now I was on the way home, and I felt a little better. I could also see that although it had felt like it, not everyone had overtaken me; a few of the people I'd overtaken were quite a fair distance behind me. I'd only seen one or two other people in Macmillan t-shirts, and when I saw a young lad bringing up the rear of the pack (although by far not the last in the field) wearing his, I yelled "Come on Macmillan!" at him, remembering how much that had spurred me on in June, and his tired red face broke into a grateful smile. I hitched my pace to match that of an older woman with white hair next to me, and we were level for most of the beachfront, with me eventually breaking ahead of her as we came back into the harbour front. Although that felt good, I wondered if I could keep it up. Clusters of people were still watching and clapping on the pavements, but a few people ahead of me had slowed to a walk, but seeing them giving up opened the way for me to question my own motivation. I began reasoning with myself about how I should listen to my body, and that if I really did need to walk, then that's what I should do. However, these last few months, I've learned to engage my inner voices in a discussion, and reason back that I've done this distance loads, and that I wasn't really tired, and that I've had really long runs where I've been sure I wasn't going to make it from the minute I've got out of the door. Usually the run finishes before the argument does.
Just as this was happening, the pavement took a sudden but mild incline and a bend, and the slight change was coupled with the 7k marker. For some reason it hit me really hard and I noticed I had a stitch, and that my right foot was feeling too tight again. My head went down and I heard my inner voice ask for help. I needed something to kick me. Despite the fact that I could now see the Spa again, out around the curve of the bay, I was flagging. Exactly at this point, a woman who had been running behind me came alongside, and then overtook me. As she came in front of me, I noticed her top, a pale salmon pink long-sleeved cotton thing. With a sweat mark on the back. And it was in the shape of a perfect heart.
"Thank you Sadie!" I thought, and grinned, picking my knees and feet up, finding a little more energy from somewhere. I realised how far I've come this year, and why. Too far to give up.
The theramin group were still making me wonder why they were bothering, and as they faded out behind me, I noticed that the band at the Spa were now mangling one of my favourite songs, New England (Kirsty MacColl was turning in her grave too), and I started singing it under my breath. The lady with the white hair, who I thought I'd left behind, suddenly passed me and settled about 30 seconds in front of me, and we were onto the last 1000m. More people were gathered towards the finish line. I heard the cheers first, and felt my spirits rise and my pace pick up before I noticed that the clock said 1.05... and that that's the fastest 10k I've ever done. At the same time, I realised that I crossed the line a while after the official start: I would actually be faster than 1.05...! Some kids had their hands out to catch hi-5s off the runners, and I let myself take 4 of them, grinning, knowing I was on for my own little record.
I stopped the stopwatch in my pocket to confirm it - 1.04.49. I got a text message from my chip time a few minutes later that confirmed it as 1.04.48. My personal best 10k time. I felt fantastic, and narrowly avoided tears by immediately joining the queue for bananas and race t-shirts.
Immediately in front of me when I got there was the lady with the heart on her back, although it had changed shape by now. I told her about it, and we got talking about races and running as we caught our breath. I went to pick my bag up and get changed out of my sweaty stuff, and the white haired lady turned up next to me. She was talking with a couple of her friends, an older man and his wife. I caught her attention and told her she was amazing, the way she'd just put that spurt on. She said how hard she'd found it, but said she'd enjoyed it, and they told me how old they were: the man was 76, and had come in at 57mins, and she was 69. I want to be racing in those times when I am their age.
As I left the Spa to walk up the hill towards town for my bus home, I saw that the last runner pace bikes were coming in, and noticed the band were now putting undue pressure on "It's got to be Perfect" (it wasn't). The clock by now was counting for the family fun run that had started on the same route 10 mins ago, so I checked the time - 11.38. The last runner was an overweight but utterly determined woman, running painfully in. As she came down the last few metres, the crowd was going crazy, clapping and cheering her on. I hope she revelled in every second of it, because everyone seemed so proud of her, and for her. 1hr and 38mins. She was a purple faced struggler, as my Dad would've said, but she bloody well did it.
I left Scarborough on the bus, with a massive proud grin on my face, and settled down to demolishing the bananas and the veggy sausage sarnie I had talked my lovely host, Derek, at The Esplanade Gardens Hotel into packing up for me. He'd seemed bewildered when I told him I was running in the race, and that I didn't generally eat before a run so wouldn't be partaking of my breakfast with the other guests, but did me the honour of building me a butty anyway. I was delighted to find he'd slipped a couple of sachets of brown sauce in there too, lovely man! I nodded off a little on the bus, and was pretty much fully recovered when I got off in Leeds.
So, that only leaves the Abbey Dash on the 20th November to complete this year's 5 Race challenge, and I'm already wondering if I can beat my personal best time?
Dad's response to my text message about my time was "This is getting serious!"
I think it might be!
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