My mid-life crisis started at 43. I had become a parent for the first time at 41 which was co-incident with an alarming increase in my consumption of full-bodied red wines and unhealthy food (and unhealthy portions). At 14st 2lbs I had a nasty premonition of how I'd look and feel at 50 and it wasn't pretty.
I'd been quite active in sports at school and into my early 20's, but apart from a brief spell in the early 1990s when I played regular 5-a-side footy, I had been largely sports-dormant for over 20 years. I had never really enjoyed running, even at school and I hated cross country (some things never change). I did represent the school in track and field in 1980, but that was only because nobody else could be persuaded to do the steeplechase or the hammer. Despite my lack of excellence in either (and there is no false modesty here I assure you) it seemed that all other schools in the locality had similar recruiting problems for these events. As a result, I ended up winning both thanks to being the least worst!
That marked the start of a 26 year lull in my running exploits. I started again tentatively with an ill-advised 6.5 mile run in July 2006. The pace was over 9 min/mile and it took me about a week to recover! I continued the 'intelligent' approach with regular 'lets-do-it-faster-than-ever-before' 5-7 mile time-trials. I was getting faster, but I was also extremely tired. In hindsight it is clear that I was a keen student of the 'if it ain't hurting it ain't working' school of training - some habits die hard!
All this then was perfect preparation for my first ever race - Standalone 10k Oct 2006. I'll never forget wandering around the farm car-park seeing all these fit-looking runners and wondering if I'd done the right thing. Then - calamity - I had no safety pins for my race-number! Fortunately, a very kind lady at the help-desk (Astrid as I was to discover some months later) had a large supply to cater for novices like me.
My longest ever run had been about 7 miles, so how hard could 6.21 miles be?! As it turned out, pretty damn hard, especially if you set of too fast (hey, this was pre-Garmin era - how was I to know)! Having said that, my official time was (just) under 46 mins, which with hindsight was a fairly good effort given I'd only been running for 3 months.
A few weeks later I managed 45:31 in the Croydon 10k. This was a much hillier course but I paced myself much better. I had really enjoyed these two races and since I had managed a 10 mile run in training I made a late entry to the Stevenage Half-marathon. Thanks to only ever doing one run over 7 miles as preparation, and the Stevenage route being fairly undulating, I was spent by the 10-mile mark and only will-power kept me going to the line. Nevertheless, I was pretty chuffed with the time of 01:38:57.
I was starting to get the bug now and continued to enter various 10k and HM races between Nov 2006 and April 2007. By that time I had got my 10k down to 42:35 (Woburn - where Ollie Saville was also running "unattached") and my HM down to 01:34:37. I had also become a Garmin-addict. I'd been toying with going along to NHRR for some months, but had never plucked up the courage. Naturally these fears were misplaced and I felt at home right away and loved both the training sessions and the way I was made to feel very welcome. I didn't hesitate and became a paid-up NHRR member in May 2007, just in time for the Midweek League 10k opener in Welwyn! Clearly, even the few sessions of structured training I'd had by that point had done something, as I bettered my PB by over 1 min with 41:18.
Now I was REALLY hooked and running was set to dominate my life as I never imagined. It would not be an exagerration to say that running has become an obsession - but a very healthy one I believe!
More anon...
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