THANKFULLY THERE ARE NO HILLS IN AMSTERDAM.

In two weeks time I am running in the Amsterdam half marathon which has been my primary focus over the last 12 weeks of training. After this week of really hard training I felt tired and lethargic after the track session on Thursday evening and decided to have two easy days before attempting the Wimbledon 10 miler on the weekend. I did not want to run flat out but fast enough to get the benefits of a quality tempo run in a race environment.

No one told me that there were 6 steep hills however. After some rather confusing instruction at the start of the race at the athletic club, instead of the advertised one lap of the track we did two and consequently I was rather bemused when passing through 1 mile the time on my watch read 7:20 – I might have been tired but this was ridiculous slow. It transpired that it should have been only the one lap so consequently each marker was 400 metres out as was the finish line 10 metres around the corner of the park entrance.

I don’t like hills much and today was my idea of a nightmare when it comes to running fast. Being a big guy 6’2’’ 80kg going up can be quite hard work but even going down had no advantage as my leg turn over relative to other runners of a similar standard is rather slow. On the flat I was over taking runners but on the downhill the gap was always closed.

I was running the race with my friend and polar explore Ben Saunders (www.bensaunders.com) who decided he was going to stay with me for as long as he could and by 4 miles he was still there nipping at my heals. While I now have far more experience and was running well within myself I think that experience can sometimes be a hindrance. In the past I used to run every race with reckless abandonment, of course with varying degrees of success. Just because you are fitter does not mean that you should not push yourself to your limits, but what I have learnt is that there is a time and a place for this type of mentality. I picked up the speed in the last 3 miles to come in just over an hour, with all things being equal I was pretty pleased with.

Before the race I was chatting to Ben about running and how I had got into it. I do have moment when I think what the hell am I doing running another race on a Sunday morning? I used to love being in the Pub swigging beer with my mates, smoking like a chimney, eating fast food and screaming at the Rugby on the TV. There are times when I miss that part of my life, but there is an inner satisfaction that I have experience through this running project that ranks far above anything else I have ever done before.