STARTING AGAIN, YET AGAIN
HARROCK HILL RACE SERIES [1]
I don't like turning up for races when I'm not in racing fettle, which is precisely why I have been a rare sight at races in recent years. Listening to the usual pre-race excuses of others last night, I enjoyed sticking mine out there. Few people escaped from being told I have higher than normal cholesterol levels - I almost seemed to revel in it! A bit like these crazy folk who claim to have bespoke food allergies because it gives them a heightened, if deluded, sense of individuality, or even class. Of course, I wasn't claiming to be a special one. More a case of humouring myself and understandably, not everybody quite tunes in to that. Who was the crackpot banging on about cholesterol last night? That would be me.
Post-cholesterol diagnosis (there I go, mentioning it again - I am obsessed) I am implicating it in to my running like it is a new start again, yet again. Positive effects of diet tweaking will not be instant, if at all, but I have to give it a go. So what? I'm not in amazing racing shape but does that mean I don't race all Summer? Maybe I need to race regular to get back racing like I want to. Bizarrely, whilst regularly toying with this obvious idea the last couple of years, I have chickened out of doing it. I turn up for a race, get my ass kicked by guys who have never beat me before, don't like it, go back to the drawing board until I go and do it again when next I feel up to kidding myself. It's been a non-productive cycle which I thought I should go and break by dragging my sorry slow legs and partially clogged arteries over to West Lancashire for the first Harrock Hill race of the series - with a view to ticking off at least one race a week now during Summer, regardless of how pants a performance I can muster. Racing myself to race fitness is something not yet tried, so the bowls somehow still remain on hold until enough time has been had for the results of this latest experiment come to fruition.
Instantly I found myself off the pace in a race I used to regularly do very well in. Initially it was difficult in such familiar surroundings to accept this fate, but I did. There was no point trying to run against the tide on a course which I know only too well will bite you on the backside if you go out too fast in the first couple of miles without the confidence of good form behind you, especially on a muggy night such as this. So I settled down, ran it sensibly, tried to ignore who was immediately ahead and whether or not I thought they should be, but yet still had a sticky time on the dragging climb in the middle section of the course. However, the last two miles were a very small and yet important positive to grab on to in that my legs finally began to feel fluent, my breathing settled and I was pleased to remind myself that I am not so old that I can't jump a cattle grid with ease. I managed to gain a place back, fuelled in the closing stages by that runner ahead cutting a corner where the course is clearly marked in the right angle of a field. A petty cheating offence to which I shouted, ''nice one pal, saved a whole second there'', the reply ''any help I can get'' resigned me to think, 'good answer, but I'm really going to have to beat you now.' Spurred by this, I finished with a bit of a flourish which was, as I say, a flicker of light on a night when I smashed a personal worst time and lowest finishing position of my umpteen appearances at Harrock Hill. It's a yardstick of where I am right now, but I am looking to do much better at next month's meeting with a few more races in the tank and refraining from offending fats. Did I mention my higher than normal cholesterol levels?

Wednesday 24th May 2017
HARROCK HILL RACE SERIES [1]   5.2m/800ft   Bispham Green, West Lancs.  
1st Man - William Rawson (Leigh) 33:56
1st Lady - Jayne Taylor (Wigan H.) 43:18
My Stats - 39:02   16/197