GIR 2008: A long walk back…

Morning broke and, while my knee was not 100%, in my wisdom I decided that I should run the GIR this afternoon. I went through my usual pre-race routine; a monster bowl of porridge, a couple of bananas, lots of water, a frantic search for the car keys (I can never find them when I really need them) and off to the race. My knee felt pretty good in so far as I couldn’t feel it which I guessed was a good thing.

I parked in the Phoenix park some 3K from the start line (I thought it was more like 1K but ask anyone that knows me and they’ll tell you that I have no concept of distance, I’m one of these “it’s just around the corner” or “down the road” people) where I met a steady stream of fellow participants jogging and looking a little worried. I asked one which way to the start line and was inform that it was 3K this way… with 15 mins to the start time. I wasn’t overly concerned, I have run this race of a few years now and it has never started on time. But it crossed my mind t hat this year could be different and I adopted the worried look and jogged to the start line.

By the time I got there I was exhausted and a little creaky in the knee dept. Not a good start, but I should have trusted my instincts as the start was delayed by 20 mins. On the plus side I had time to catch my breath and stretch. When the race finally started I found myself a the back of the crowd, I could see a few chickens, batman and a couple of very large, bearded women (I made the assumption that there were men dressed in drag but since the collapse of the iron curtain you never know, they did all kinds of weird experiments on athletes behind that curtain…) so I knew I’d be stuck behind quite a few walkers.

When I crossed the start line I set my watch and sprinted to a halt as I hit a walking wall of middle-aged women, why they have to walk side by side I’ll never know. Getting past them I had another half a kilometer of walking walls to scale. I felt a little like Steve McQueen in one of the closing scenes of the Great Escape, although I didn’t have half the German army out to kill me.

Anyway, as soon as I started running I felt the pain in my knee and it got progressively worse, hitting a peak at around the 5K mark where my pace plummeted. The last 5K was a painful stretch and it was a real effort to keep going. I crossed the line in a little over 1 hour 3 mins. Not my best but glad to have finished. However once I had crossed the line and had stopped running the pain really hit home. It was a long, long walk back to the car.