Last Tuesday I had a 3-mile race just two miles from my front door. How convienient! Except I was in Greece still. There’s a huge business around doing races in foreign counties and you could spend thousands of pounds doing the Great Wall of China marathon, the Everest marathon and such likes. But I think I may be the first person in the history of running to have travelled 1,350 miles to do a 3-mile race that started on their doorstep.

At 4pm I landed at Gatwick and, not having any luggage to pick up, sprinted through most of the arrivals hall. There didn’t seem to be anyone around and within half an hour of landing I was on a train, and by 5.30 I was home. This was a PB for this distance and a good omen, I thought, for my race later on.

Cut to 7.15 and I was lining up at the start of a 3-mile handicap. If you’ve never done one of these races before it sounds more complicated than it is. Everyone gets given a ‘handicap’ so the slowest runners start first and the fastest go off last with everyone else staggered in between according to speed. The idea is that everyone should finish at around the same time and you should aim to catch those in front of you. It sounded confusing but all I had to do was listen for my name and then run when I was told to.

I’d forgotten to charge my Garmin so I had no idea how I was doing but, as I’d set off with people that had done a similar time to me I knew I just had to stick with them and try to overtake some of the people in front. I finished in an unofficial 22.15 – 30 seconds better than last time. I say unofficial because this is an estimate based on two people that started with me and finished slightly before and after me and had remembered their watches.

After the race I felt ill. Nothing new here then. I ran the two miles home and put some chips in the oven. But I was off my chips. This was worrying. By 10pm I was sick, sick, sick. We’re talking The Exorcist. For the next 24 hours I was ill. Back and forth to the bathroom I trapsed and at one point I slept on the bathroom floor, sweating and shivering.

But in the depths of my illness when I wanted the ground to swallow me up and end it, there was just one glimmer of hope. One lone, positive thought went through my mind: “If I’m this ill, I wonder what time I would have done if I was well.” Only a runner could think that.

Juneathon Day 6
1 lame mile run