The Curious Incident of the Portaloo in the Airfield
I have managed to fit in a lot of races in a short period of
time, this is my 43rd race since I started in December 2011, and I
think this my favourite half marathon I have run. The Gosport Half Marathon is
well organised and friendly, the marshals are ace, the route is flat, the
scenery is pretty good, and the PB potential is a good 9 out of 10. Everything
was pointing towards having a great crack at a sub 1 hour 35 minute finishing
time, everything but my absent mindedness and forgetting the first major rule
of preparing for any race!
Sunday morning brings with it a cold bite and a very crispy
chill in the air, brass monkeys, parky, and a certain part of a witches’
anatomy could also describe what Mother Nature has furnished us with on this
fine day. I briefly pick up my running tights and then put them down in favour
of my shorts, not wanting to finally succumb to wintery running clothing,
everything else was duly laid out the previous night ready for this morning,
even my number was pinned to my shirt! Running gear all accounted for, fresh
clothes, towel, travelling trackie, gels, bloks, Vaseline, Imodium.. ahh hold
up no Imodium, no worries I will grab some on the way.
I bet you can now guess the theme to this blog, I will try
not to build the anticipation of toiletry
conducts, however this is the main part of my story, my running chums
(no pun intended) I am sure will sympathise and relate to the dilemma, for
everyone else lets refer to it as runners belly !!
Grabbing my kit I head over to Gary’s house and wait for
Luc, there is only one road in and out of Gosport so we leave in plenty of time
to get there. I momentarily forget the need to purchase Imodium and when I do
remember we have already gone past all the shops, I decide that I probably will
not need it as it should take me just over an hour and a half to complete and there
will be toilets en route if needed. I will rue this decision with a passion
between miles 8 and 10 with a pain that can surely only be comparable with
childbirth.
We arrive, park up and make our way to collect our timing
chips. Just before I drop my bag off I decide that it’s probably a good idea to
nip to the gents before the start, walking through the school doors I am
confronted with huge queue snaking round the corner. Rue decision number 2
(again no pun intended) not to bother queuing up and head towards the start.
With 15 minutes to go we assemble near the start line, we
have collected Colin and Hannah along the way and stand shivering waiting for
the gun. I have a strategy for the race, the first 5 miles all under 7 minutes
each, then the remaining between 7 and 7:30, this should mean I hit 1 hour 35
minutes squarely on the nose. It starts to get more packed as about 1600
runners stand shoulder to shoulder waiting for the off. There are so many club
t shirts in this race, because it is flat it attracts a lot of good runners
from quite far a-field and it is an excellent opportunity to achieve a personal
best. This was certainly my intention and as long as everything went to plan I
should shave at least two minutes off of my Portsmouth half Marathon time of 1:36:50,
the Portsmouth is a trail race so in comparison this should be much easier to
get sub 1:35.
The tannoy crackles into life and we are ushered forward, a
surge of vested runners huddle together awaiting the off. The gun goes and the
race begins. As always my excited legs bound me off fast, propelling me forward
like an excited puppy, we start on an open road where there is a lot of space
to find your ground and your pace, it soon files into a narrow pathway where
there is not much room for overtaking manoeuvres, this normally would be an
issue but as it is at the beginning of the run it probably saved me going too
hard and fast in the first couple of miles. We turn off the pathway and into an
airfield, now running to the sound of Caribbean steel drums, beating out music
of sunnier climates, palm trees, and relaxation ahhhhhhhh, the music vibrated
through the ground and up through my body, it was kind of euphoric and at that
time I was really really enjoying my race.
I will pass the drums again at mile 9 as we take in two
loops of the airfield, already I was well into mile 4 and all of my mile times
so far had started with a 6, bang on schedule, my legs felt good, my breathing
was great, everything was in tune and I was starting to think that Gos-Vegas
was the place to set my fastest run yet.
Exiting the airstrip we move back onto the roads again, up
towards Stubbington and through some housing, people were standing at the end
of their drives cheering and handing out jelly babies, I was eating up some
serious pavement and had settled in a group who were all running at 7 min mile
pace, a little part of me thought maybe I could hit nearer to 1:30, I started
to calculate the times in my head and whether this was possible, did I have
enough miles left to make up a few seconds here and there ?? , could I pick it
up a bit now or should I save some in the tank and really push hard for home ??,
maybe I should eat a shot blok and .. *gargle* .. my stomach flipped a bit, ok
no need to panic just yet, so perhaps if I ate a shot blok now and then picked
up the pace a little bit .... *big stomach gargle* .. and there it was, without
warning ‘runners belly’ crept up on me slapped me in the face and had my eyes
darting around for the closest conveniences. By this point we had entered into
the airfield again, I could hear the steel drums being played with enthusiasm
and zest, this time however it felt more like impending Indian war drums, the
kind that instead of making you want to dance makes you want to hide instead.
The vibrations reverberated through my body and lingered in my stomach, shaking
and shuddering it to and fro, pushing and squeezing, bubbling into a crescendo
of white horses crashing and tearing like a tsunami of pain ….. yep its runners
belly alright. The only known cure known to man is the cross legged run. I
broke into the cross legged run quite quickly, it’s a kind of weird skip where
everything is clenched, it comes in waves and if you miss out on a clench you
may end up regrettably ‘doing a Radcliffe’. My eyes are scouring my surroundings,
but this is an airfield, there are no tree’s or bushes, everywhere is just a
vastness of nothing, you can run 500 yards in any direction and still be out in
the open. This is getting serious now and I am briefly thankful I am wearing
gloves (now people who have been in similar positions and have experienced
runners belly will understand what I meant by this sentence, sometimes when you
are in the middle of nowhere, especially in a trail race you have to make do
with what you have, it is not uncommon for runners to start a race wearing
gloves and socks and sometimes come back having left them buried in the woods,
if you still don’t understand what I mean think what you would do in a festival
portaloo when there is no paper left).
Now I am not a religious man, in fact far from it, but if
ever I was going to believe in any god it may well be the deity of runners, it
was like Hermes himself saw my plight and zapped down a sign, a mirage shinning
in an asphalt desert adorned from a lamppost with an arrow pointing which
simply read ‘toilets’. The clenched run became an awkward hop shuffle as if
reading that very word was enough to leave the departure lounge and board the
plane, my outstretched hand reached for the handle and with great relief pulled
the unlocked door open. The next few minutes were spent waving goodbye to a PB
and thinking Freud may have a point with his theories of psychological gratification
and concluding that expulsion was definitely more rewarding than retention.
Getting back running again was just as difficult, I now have
to set off again at a similar pace and my legs complained a lot, stopping in
any run makes it so difficult to start again, your legs seize up and the
inclination to proceed wavers, this is why runners will always hop and bound at
traffic lights waiting to cross the road, not wanting to cool down, keeping warm
to start again. It took a good mile before I got into my stride and I reckon I
must have lost about 3 or 4 minutes in total for my unscheduled pit stop with
no way of catching up this lost time. We leave the airfield and head down to
Lee on Solent beach promenade, the scenery cheers me up and I focus on the last
couple of miles home, a couple of half decent miles and I will be close to my
PB, which under the circumstances is better than nothing. I don’t know what my
exact time is as I had stopped my Garmin in the portaloo but I continue to run
about 7 minute miles. Stokes Bay is looming and the cheering crowd is getting
more condensed, I can see the finish line as I turn the corner and look at the
clock on the right hand side, I put in one final sprint and take in my time as
I cross the line.
1:37:10 !!!!
20 Seconds off of a PB !!!!
I don’t know whether to be happy or gutted, 20 seconds out
but 4 minutes down, the end result is that it is not a personal best, but I
know I can spank my old time.
I
jog back up the road and cheer on the other guys with
encouragement such as ‘the beer is near’ and ‘call that a sprint finish’ Lisa
is first in view and dishes out a high five, then its Colin and Hannah who have
had a great race, closely followed by Luc and Gary who battle it out for a fast
finish.
The good news is that everyone bar me achieved a PB, the
course is fab, I could wax lyrical about how much I enjoyed (most of) this event,
it was split down into manageable chunks and recognisable splits therefore
making it better to not only judge the distance, but to decrease it to an
extent where the miles flew by quickly and markers could easily be established.
For anyone looking for a fast well organised half, this is it!
So 43 races in and I am still learning, runners belly is
like stealthy ninja that can make you run like a crab and cry like a girl, my
advice ? Always remember Imodium, always check out where the loo’s are on the
map beforehand, never dismiss a queue, oh and if needed always wear gloves.
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| I am still wearing both gloves !! |
