Sunday 19th June 1983 was a hot and fairly windy day, but this time I stuck rigidly to my pre-race plan of aiming to run 6’30”s for 20 miles and then hang on to the finish to get a PB. As I went through 20 miles in 2hrs 10’40”, I was very nearly spot on, and didn’t fade much at all in the last 6.2 miles as I finished in 2hrs 52’17” – very satisfied with an improvement of more than 6 minutes off my previous best, and 57th place out of 1,324 finishers. My mileage dipped over the next few weeks, but I carried on with a pretty regular racing regime, including a few track races, among which I achieved a new personal best of 4’40” for the 1500 metres at Tonbridge A.C’s club championships and a few road races, including a 10½ miler in Paddock Wood which I organised. As the summer came to a close I had another go at the SLH 30, but without having done any specific training for it the aim was simply to finish. Taking a conservative approach to the distance, I reached the marathon point in 3hrs 12’26”, but ran out of steam for the last 4 miles, slowing to a ten minute mile pace to cross the line in 3hrs 53. Such was my enthusiasm at the time that I didn’t have a rest day after the “30” and bounced back up to high mileage weeks that occasionally hit 60 mile weeks, including a race most weekends. Diary entries during this period show that the higher mileage and higher intensity and quality of the training was taking it’s toll, with remarks such as “shattered”, “very slow & tired” and “nearly stopped and walked” all appearing within the space of 3 weeks suggesting that I may not have the balance quite right. With yet another marathon scheduled for 23rd October – this time at Harlow – I took an easy week of just 16 miles in the week leading up to it, but just 2 days before the race did a very fast pace 4 mile run, which may not have been too wise. Exactly what the cause was, I’m unsure, but the Harlow race was almost a repeat of the unsuccessful Guildford experience, with me slowing down quite early on and feeling stiff and achey I decided that rather than shuffle a slow, painful 3hr10’ effort, I pulled up at just before 16 miles. The year closed out with a few weeks on lower mileage, and a club race every week or so with Tonbridge and for the 2nd year, I organised an extremely low-key cross country run on Boxing day of approx 7 miles, starting and finishing at the recreation ground in Five Oak Green. This was a bit of a labour of love which took a bit of effort to invite/advertise by photocopied sheets all local runners, make signposts to try to ensure no-one got lost during the race, and on the morning of the race run the route, placing the route markers around the course. Although turnout was small, fewer than 20 hardy souls, it was a fun way of running off the Christmas day excesses. Sadly though, despite my marking out the course just an hour before the run started, on both occasions, someone took some pleasure in moving a couple of the signs, which caused enough confusion to ruin it as far as it being any kind of competitive event was concerned. My total mileage for 1983 was 2106.
1984
Although the new year kicked off immediately with the traditional county cross country championship on the first weekend of January, the race that I had my sights set on was the Tonbridge 10 to be held on 10th March. A long established race on the calendar, it more or less marked the end of the long winter cross country season, and the start of the road racing and track season and always attracted a large high quality turnout. I worked out a weekly training schedule that I hoped would get me in good shape for the race and tried to stick to it. Before that though, and as always unable to resist a race, much against my better judgment I went along with an idea that Iain put to me. Namely, that we should enter an event called the British Powerjog championships that was being advertised in the national athletics press. Enter it we did, and having recruited another gullible Paddock Wood runner called Paul Wood, we travelled to London on 28th January to compete in the heats of the competition. Essentially, the event was held in a well appointed sports club/ gymnasium in central London and comprised of four treadmills set up side by side, each with a large digital display above and in front of them showing pace and distance covered. Each of the four competing teams set off at the gun and had to cover 3 miles as quickly as possible, with team members covering a distance before “handing over” relay style to the next member to carry on. The fact that none of the 3 of us were milers, that strictly speaking Paul Wood and myself weren’t even track runners, and that whilst Iain had some pedigree over 400 metres, he never raced on the track above that distance, should have told us that we were not suitably qualified for the task in hand. My feelings of unease turned to something closer to terror when, as we walked into the venue the very first person we saw warming up was John Gladwin, who was an International miler, and competed regularly as a member of the British athletics team. Despite feeling horribly out of our depth, it was too late to back out so we put on a brave face and started warming up for the race. As for the actual event, I don’t remember too much about it, although we kept up a very respectable pace and were by no means being disgraced when, as I found myself relentlessly increasing my pace over the last 400 metres , briefly hitting 4 minute mile pace as I raced to the finish, watching the display ahead of me counting down the last 300, 200, 100, 50, 20 metres. Absolutely flat out at the moment of crossing the “finish line” I made the kind of mistake you only make once – I stopped running ! This would have been fine of course, were it not for the fact that the treadmill belt kept spinning round at a pretty frantic speed. The result being that my feet were shot from under me, I hit the deck of the treadmill and was thrown off the back at a fair rate of knots. If I’d been a spectator, I think I’d probably have found it hard not to laugh at such a spectacle. Unfortunately though, I was too busy being battered, bruised and mildly concussed to immediately see the funny side of the incident. I did though quickly recognise how embarrassingly stupid I was to have made such a mistake and limped away as quickly as possible !
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