7 October: Trails and Tribulations

Nothing much to say about my run today: just an 8-miler to stretch the legs after yesterday - along the Whitegate Way and back afte the morning sun had gone.

News filters through from elsewhere though: a right old palaver is developing in the Chicago Marathon. I get the first report through on Helen's race on email and at 15K she's running about 7:25 miles, a long way behind schedule. She gets slower: 7:36 overall miling at half marathon; 8:28 by 35K - and at the finish she's run a time of 3:56. I have a quick look at the news reports and it seems that the weather has not only been hot, but incredibly humid: awful conditions for a distance race - later, it turns out that 300 runners have been hospitalised and one has died, although it's not clear whether the conditions had anything to do with it. Runners at the back of the field found the course closed behind them. There's always a fuss when things go wrong in races - usually because of the weather - and the fuss over this one will be huge. I don't like the big events as there's so often a problem, with blame and arguments long after the race is over - I remember the slagging the Blackpool Marathon organisers took after the 2005 race there held in difficult 85 degree conditions. I was only running the half that day and recorded a personal worst - but the furore afterwards seemed to develop a life of its own with many people who weren't even at the race joining in with the lynching over the lack of water on the course - all very ugly.

The important thing is that she's ok - it's a shame that all the hard work in training has been scuppered by hard conditions, but I hope she'll find some positives to take from it, however difficult it is when you've been focused on the one race for so long.

Oddly, I admitted to Lindsay on Saturday that even if I didn't get to run the Snowdonia this year for some unexpected reason, it wouldn't matter too much, I've such a good time training for it. Of course, conditions in North Wales are unlikely to be oppressivley hot and humid at the end of October, but the weather can throw all sorts of other nasties at you, so there's a fair chance of a slow time however well prepared I might be!

Better news here at home: I hear from Tom who has run a magnificent Sandstone Trail Race to finished seventh overall (only fourth MV40, it's tough in the Old Git's Club!) - and even better Tony has won the MV50 class. I'll probably never reach those heights, blessed as I am not with natural athletic ability (never mind the 20 years of smoking!) - but athletics at our level is always as least as much about a struggle with yourself as it is about competition with the rest of the world. And at the end of the day, it's just one of the things that makes up a life.