Last night's race was Blackamoor Chase - 6miles / 1450' of ascent. This is home territory for me as I regularly train on most parts of the route and know it inside-out.
Having managed to run up the two final hills of the race in training earlier in the year, I was pretty confident of easily beating my time of 54:30 set 2 years ago when I'd just started fell racing. I'd also had a week off training to recover from a bruised foot sustained in last week's Grindleford race, so should have been on peak form.
Before leaving the house for the jog to the venue at Totley, I mentioned to my wife that I didn't really feel like racing, but that I'd go anyway. Usually I'm really keen and enthusiastic, but yesterday: meh! After a gentle warmup around the cricket pitch, I still felt the same, but just put it down to not having run for a week.
I had a reasonably good start, getting away at a good pace near the front and up the short steep hill before catching my breath a little along Strawberry Lea Lane. Only a couple of people passed me, so it felt ok at this stage. Up the first climb, and I seemed to be running ok. A few people passed me, as is normal, but then a couple of club-mates came past. Not unsurprising, given that they're both on form at the moment, but I had hoped that my week off would have given me an edge over them. They both gradually edged away from me and I ended up having a mini-race with 3 or 4 other runners, changing places every few minutes.
Things started to go a bit wrong on the long descent from Piper House Gate to Blackamoor Stepping Stones. I had quite a bit of pain from the heel of the foot I bruised last week. It felt like a blister, but I never get blisters, so I just attributed it to banging down on the bruised area of the foot. This slowed me on the descent. Not by a lot, but enough for me to notice and allow one of the guys I'd been racing with earlier to get away. Then we're onto the last 2 hills. By my reckoning, I should have been up there like a whippet. In the end, though, I gave up and walked the steepest part of the first hill. I think this was a mental issue - I had decided that walking would be almost as fast as running it, so I might as well save some energy for the last hill. It's only 100m or so anyway, so not much time to lose. I managed to run again up the next part of the hill and caught the guy who'd left me on the descent, encouraging him to run when he started walking. After a short downhill stretch, we're into the final hill. I've run this several times this year, after never being able to run up it before, so it should have been easy. I ended up walking most of it. Again, I think it was mental: it was easier to walk and I wouldn't lose much time! I disappointed myself here.
Finally we're over the summit of the hill and it's downhill all the way. By this time, my heel was exceptionally painful, so I was trying to land on the forefoot rather than heel striking. This is very difficult when going downhill! I guess I lost a few seconds and a couple of places here, but managed an ok pace.
Time at the finish was 54:34. I hadn't felt that I'd been particularly slow, but was very disappointed not to have knocked at least a minute off my time from 2 years ago. That should have been easily achieved given that I've done it in the preceding two races.
So, what went wrong?
Well, I think I knew that I wasn't 100% yesterday. As I mentioned, I'm usually bursting with enthusiasm for races, but last night I wasn't. So there's a mental hurdle I created for myself as well as the possible physical problem that created it. I do have a bit of a sniffle and have been a bit grouchy, so maybe that's a bug I've picked up after the stressful 27+ miles of Baslow Bootbash a couple of weeks ago. Other than that, I don't know what else could be wrong. I had the same preparation and pre-race nourishment as last week, and if anything should have been stronger because of the lack of training.
I'm not going to get downhearted about it though. It's just one race and lots of different factors affect performance, so I'll look forward to getting it back together at next week's race.
Oh, and the cause of the heel pain: a blister the size of a 2p piece. This was wearing SmartWool socks and Inov8 Mudclaw 272's. I don't normally wear these shoes for summer racing and I think my heel was moving around in the heel cup of the shoe causing the rubbing. Note made to alter sock choice and/or stick to the X-Talons or Bare Grip 200s for summer.
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