o.t.s.o…..a reality check

What on earth was I thinking of?

Sometimes you just can’t see the wood for the trees!

Back in early March I posted about having a go at the 3 forts challenge, a 27 mile very hilly trail race on the south downs, which takes place this Sunday.

On 3^rd March I’d had a reasonable (but nothing special) run in the “pancake flat” Paddock Wood half marathon, and apparently felt that was indication enough that I was ready to knock out a good hilly marathon. Clearly brimming with some inexplicable and utterly unwarranted confidence, I set out on a training regime that comprised of – almost nothing!

From the 3^rd March until 19^th April, I did low mileage, slow runs and didn’t run any distance beyond 9 miles, and quite honestly didn’t really even think about the 3 forts looming up ahead of me. On the 19^th April however, with two weeks left before the race, panic set in and I went out on a 16 mile cross country run. I ran slowly and shuffled the last few miles and felt wiped out afterwards. Five days ago I ran a 17 miler, was even slower – only a little above fast walking for the last couple of miles – and felt similarly drained. So with only about a week to go, that had been my preparation for a genuinely tough race.

But here’s the bit that genuinely baffles me; after each of those two runs I felt a real sense of disappointment and even shock that I should have struggled, and that I didn’t appear to be remotely ready for the 3 forts race. Never once, until this morning did it occur to me that the obvious lack of any appropriate training might be the cause of my struggling. Which leads me to wonder why, with so many years of training and racing under my belt, I could be that naïve – or arrogant ? Did I seriously think that I could just turn up and run an event like the 3FC with no prep ? I might just have got away with that 30 years ago…..but that was 30 years ago. Time to learn a good lesson and show some respect.

For the past few days I’d been increasingly anxious about my prospects for Sunday, and today I received the OK from the organisers to switch to the half marathon route, taking place at the same time  – phew!!!

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