Yesterday I was out at Wimpole Estate for parkrun, including a last-minute volunteer. At Wimpole they have a separate dog start for the canicross runners and so they have a separate briefing. Trying to communicate over 20 excited dogs barking constantly is pretty difficult and I feel like I was largely surplus to requirements, but I was able to do the run with everyone else, so no big deal. Also saw quite a few other members of the bellringer's running club, the 'Tailenders', so all in all a good morning!
Tailenders post-parkrun photo (stolen from David)
So, onto today, the Red Bull Wings for Life World Run. It's an annual event sponsored by Red Bull that raises money for research into spinal cord disease. The premise is simple - you start running, half an hour later a 'catcher car' (driven by David Coulthard, who was also giving out hi-fives at the start line) sets off from the start line at a set speed and gradually increases its speed in increments as it goes. You keep running until the car catches and overtakes you, after that your race is over! It is a global event that takes place at 25 locations worldwide simultaneously, so not only are you racing against the people in Cambridge, you're also running with about 80,000 other people all over the world.
I ran this last year, on the same weekend in May. It was unseasonably warm that Sunday, the temperature was about 26C and blazing sunshine. It was a really tough afternoon and I got caught after 1h 50m, only managing to make it to 20.4km. The key to this race is a steady pace; because the finish line is not fixed and depends on how fast you're going relative to the car, any drop in your pace means that the car can end up catching you a lot sooner than you think. My aim this year was to average 5 minutes per kilometre - this would mean being caught at exactly 27km.
We started from Parker's Piece in the city centre, pre-race was a bit disorganised - there weren't enough toilets and the queue for the bag drop point was huge. As with most big races they tried to separate the runners into different pens based on predicted speed, with the faster runners nearer the front, but as usual there were plenty of people in the first two pens who clearly were not going to run at the pace they were supposed to. This is one of my big bugbears about these big races where there are thousands of runners, it just means that you spend the first 10 minutes or so trying to make your way past slower runners and it generally causes a bit of chaos for everybody. I was through the first kilometre in just over 5:30 and then managed a few slightly quicker km splits to regain the lost time. We headed north out of the City along Huntingdon Road and then through Girton out onto the fens. This first part of the course was the same as last year, but this year, instead of heading right out into the fenlands, we went into the old RAF Oakington base and then began a loop through Over and Willingham that would eventually bring the faster runners back into Oakington via Rampton and Cottenham and they would then repeat this loop until caught.
I definitely preferred this new route to last year's (except for the Longstanton bypass, which was just a long featureless drag into a bit of a headwind), although in many places the course was very narrow and did not leave a huge amount of space for the catcher car to pass. I was feeling pretty good until about the 21km point (at 1h 45m half marathon pace I was expecting to make it that far reasonably comfortably) but I definitely started to fade after 22km. This was not surprising - if I'd been able to slog on for another 4km I'd probably have taken about 10 minutes of my best 30km time! Another problem was that the refreshment stations only had water in cups. Anybody who has tried drinking from a cup whilst running will know that it doesn't work, so towards the end, when I could feel the dehydration kicking in, I had to stop and walk for a while to actually make sure I got some fluid on board. The combination of fading legs and slowing down for water meant that I was eventually caught on a tiny little road half way between Willingham and Rampton having managed to pass the 26km board (my official distance was 26.26km (16.3 miles), only 3/4km off my target). Unfortunately this point turned out to be about halfway between the two nearest bus stops where runners were picked up to be taken back to the start, so I had to walk a mile or so into Rampton to actually make it to the end of the day's exertions!
My run route (minus walk to the bus stop)
Back on Parker's Piece with medal and confused woman in the background
The male and female winners in Cambridge made it to 68.8km and 55.14km respectively, and the worldwide winners managed 68.21km (female winner, in Santiago, Chile) and 92.14km (Male winner, in Dubai). Absolutely incredible!
Overall I was very happy with the race, I was very close to the target I set myself and a good 6km further than last year. A slight concern however, is that the niggle in my left knee has definitely not settled down, and if anything is getting slightly worse. It's still not causing me significant pain, either whilst running or during normal day-to-day activity, but the ligaments over the inside of the joint are certainly inflamed and not 100% comfortable. These sorts of things are always worrying - it would be a real setback if it did turn into a proper injury that required significant recovery time. Therefore, I think I'm going to rest this week and maybe look to do some cross training with a decent bike ride next weekend. Then fingers crossed I'll see if I can ease back into the running and gradually build up the miles again without aggravating things too much. Ultimately if this does turn out to be a big issue then I know that I can easily switch to walking the 100km, rather than running, so I don't intend to be coming up with any excuses!
On the plus side, I've had some very generous donations to my sponsorship page this week, and I'm currently up to £140, which is very encouraging and certainly makes all of this running worthwhile!
Watch this space for next week's update!
Stephen
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