A nice cup of tea makes it stop hurting by onthefloor04

Highworth ho, it’s off to work we go, or at least it would be if a hilly half marathon were your job, otherwise it’s off to a hard long tempo run/race in preparation for the new road season.

The Highworth Half is an invitational race held each year for teams only, five people, one of whom must be a lady (as we have no ladies we had to rely on our women instead, god I love that joke).

After last week’s very poor xc race I had been ill for a good deal of the week with what I can only self-diagnose as a chest infection, and right up to the start of the race I was unsure if I’d start the race myself for fear of doing myself any long-term damage. In the end I felt obliged as the (previous) Skip, had had to pull out with a shin problem so I would be expected to be a scoring runner.

So to make sure I didn’t cause myself any chest/lung scarring (which is a real issue if you run with a chest infection, s’true it happened to the Bdub when she ran Blackpool and wasn’t the same for months after)  I decided to run it as a long tempo run, and not get caught up in any darn silly sprint finishes or battles with other teams. I pretty much knew that we didn’t have the personnel to win it, which was a shame as the club at full strength would walk it, so it didn’t matter if I wasn’t 100%.

In previous years I have run well here, in fact I think I came fifth 2 years ago, this year I was already quite a way down on that by the time I hit mile 1.
By mile 2 things started to thin out a bit and I found myself slowly catching then overtaking a small group of very enthusiastic starters who were beginning to be caught out by the hills.
Highworth sits at the top of a hill and surrounded by hills. The course descends fast for the first mile, undulates to mile three before flattening out for the following five or six miles…then it goes up…and up.

So by mile three I’d fallen into pace with a chap from Cirencester and we eased away from the surrounding  melee and began to hunt the guys ahead of us.
I knew a good deal of those runners and knew which ones we were likely to catch, which ones would get away and which ones would fade.
It was quite nice really being able to chat for the next three miles or so. I admitted that I had no intention of going mental and would probably ease off by seven or eight miles.
We realised we probably hadn’t been trying hard enough when we were caught by another runner (Swindon) who pointed out we sounded like we were having a mothers meeting.
I said that we were very nearly in the vet category and could probably count as grandmothers (especially as I’m from Romford) at which Cirencester boy used a phrase I figured I’d never hear from another man, certainly not whilst racing against him “I’m more of a GILF” If you’re not sure what that means Google it…although probably best not to do that at work.

Anyway as the course started to climb at the nine mile mark I made the discretionary move of easing off and allowing my two companions to pull away from me.

By the first of the big climbs I was overtaken by another Swindon runner but none of them really got too far away, despite taking it easy for the last couple of miles, so I was pretty pleased with that, a little more fitness and some good health and I’d be in not too bad a place for early January.

I had to put my foot down over the last mile and the final big climb just to make sure but finished comfortably in 17^th place in a time of 1:22:12 (the course is reckoned to be a touch short but even for 13 miles I was happy with that). Not quite enough for us to win or even manage the podium but fourth team on the day.

Personally I couldn’t have expected any more before the race started and I guess it isn’t a bad place to begin preparations for London and the upcoming road season.