I tell myself each year that celebrating the arrival of the New Year is never worth the anguish I experience the following day. My ability to hold my head above chest-level goes out of the window, bonding time with my bathroom increases and I’ll often shed a tear as my hand stumbles upon receipt after receipt of unnecessary card transactions. I am, of course, referring to the consumption of too much alcohol, a very late night, little to no sleep, and starting the New Year as you really do not mean to go on – hungover. The perfect solution to that was to enter a race on New Year’s Day, and set myself a goal other than “make it round without throwing up”. Fortunately, Cleethorpes NYD 10k is a flat, local course, and the organisers were willing to accommodate my lack of race planning. Don’t get me wrong, the whisky bottle was opened. A little celebration is always in order. Especially as 2017 is going to be an exciting year for me for a number of reasons.
Towards the end of 2016 I had been struggling to motivate myself. I wasn’t running as well as I’d hoped and I couldn’t seem to stay as healthy as I’d expected. I would normally be the guy who would get away with training on the verge of winter illness, but perhaps those days are gone! So my target for Cleethorpes 10k on NYD was to run as fast as I could. I thought this would remind me to be competitive with myself. It may sound daft to some. “Isn’t the point of a race to run as fast as your can?” But, at this time of year race fixtures can dominate our calendar. The training Mark [Baddeley] has set us prioritises the bigger cross country races. Fatigue is always looming. So turning up to a local 10k doesn’t suggest I’ll be running eyeballs out from the gun, with my racing-head engaged. If I intensify too many runs, too close together, my chances of hitting my season’s targets may quickly diminish. However, I hadn’t raced for a while, so this was a sound opportunity to practice engaging racing-head.
I finished second. I was pleased with how I ran. I was beaten by fellow training partner, Matt Bowser, with a road 10k best of 29:53. However, I did manage to beat another training partner, James Straw, who recently ran 30:55 for 10k. I was starting the race as the third fastest 10k road runner, and no certainty of what sort of time I was capable of. One thing was for sure – I was ready to get stuck in and give it my best shot, despite the weather conditions not being favourable.
From the gun, I made sure I stuck to whoever was on the front. I hadn’t looked back until we were a mile in and noticed, James, was no longer running with us. I recall thinking that perhaps it wasn’t his day. Or perhaps I had started too aggressively and he’d mop me up within the final mile. Thankfully, the latter didn’t materialise.
I tracked Matt pretty much to halfway. I did flirt with the lead on the odd occasion until the strong headwinds scared me back to shelter. It felt like he was throwing in the odd surge during the first half of the race but never seemed to fully commit. This allowed my confidence to grow.
At halfway I actually took to the front, intentionally, to maintain the pace. A spectator called out 15:35 for 5km. At this point I felt confident of a faster second half knowing a PB was on the cards. A mile later, Matt was back on the front increasing the effort. I managed to track well up until the only real incline of the race. He surged again and successfully gained a few seconds on me. My legs did not like that incline. At the ‘summit’ we weren’t separated by as much ground as I initially thought. But my optimism only lasted a blink. By this point we were getting battered by some diagonal wind, and Matt coped better than I could on this occasion.
The next mile was horrendous. There was no escape for me. I had clearly been beaten. Matt had quickly opened a 20/30 second gap in that mile and all I could do was concentrate on getting to race HQ where I knew there was roughly half a mile to go. “Half ‘a mile is nothing” I thought. Well no, Shane – half of a mile is half of an actual mile. And what a desperate half-mile it was. There was no dispute in the direction that the wind was blowing when I made that left turn for the home straight. I can’t repeat the thoughts flooding my head for the remaining half-mile.
So I’ll skip to the finish. 31:35 for second place. I was pleased. Albeit wet, cold, and resembling a drowned-rat. But a pleased drowned-rat. I set a target; I hit my target. And upon analysis I knew there would be some good form just around the corner. Sometimes all you need is a self-confidence boost to get back to where you want to be.