One-hour Race. Perth W.A. 19/10/2003

It's an odd thing, you know. On the biggest island on the planet, more spacious than all of western Europe with only a third of the population of Britain, where land is in such plentiful supply than virtually all houses are single-storey, sprawling affairs and every other street corner has a designated area of parkland or bush, that the Western Australian Marathon Club insists on running all of its races on tight little laps. Those of you with an unusually drab life might remember that when I was here a couple of years ago I ran a 5-lap 10km road race up and down a suburban street, and followed it a week later with a marathon up and down a 6.5 mile stretch of road with a bollard at each end.

This weekend's offering was a one-hour race, which was held over a 1km circuit in a small corner of the University of Western Australia's vast sports ground. The loop was marked with scruffy traffic cones, which I assured had been rounded up during a Saturday morning trawl through the students' bedrooms in the nearby halls of residence.

I'd never run a race where the winning mark would be measured in distance rather than time, and I hoped that the format might generate an interesting tactical variation to ease the boredom of running in perfectly flat circles for an hour. In the event I made do with my usual tactic of starting too fast and dying a slow and painful death.

At the start of each lap was a bevvy of lap-counters, each counting for about three runners. Before the race started I made a point of finding out who mine was, and of introducing myself to him and pointing out the large 'W' on my

vest, lest he miss me on the way past. Behind my apprehension lurked the life-long regret of an old friend of mine from my days in Gloucester, Martin Daykin. During the late early 1980s Martin was one of the world's best ultra-runners. On a 400m track one day in 1982, Martin tore lumps off the existing world 200km best, and lay reveling in the afterglow for more than an hour before being approached by a timorous official and told that he was a lap short. Despite the fact that his back-up crew had logged every lap, and despite the fact that the official lap-times showed one mysteriously twice as long as all the others around it, Martin's record was never recognised. I wasn't about to let my counter nod off, and every time I completed a lap I waved at him, which I think he found somewhat disconcerting.

Like all races here, mine started at an uncomfortably early hour and we left the blocks at 7a.m. Immediately a lead-group of four was established, and I tucked in at what felt like a realistic pace a stride behind the leader. After

5 or 6 laps I drifted to the front and gradually opened a 25m lead. I was still feeling quite chipper, although the temperature was climbing steadily. After about half an hour I was caught by a tall bloke with yellow shorts and a

Russian accent. Just around this time my body suddenly realised that I had run neither this fast nor this far, nor this early (with the exception of last-weeks jet-lagged stumblings on the golf-course) for an awfully long time. I

started to struggle and watched the yellow shorts pulled away with ease.

A couple of uniformed police appeared beside the lap-counters a couple of laps later, and fancied that I saw one of them eyeing the traffic cones suspiciously. With some effort I kept it together and my pace dropped gradually, by a few seconds / km. It was quite handy running small laps with a track-side clock by which to monitor my inexorable decline. One of the coppers appeared to be taking an interest in my lap-times, and I became concerned that if I slowed much more he might nick me for loitering.

The prospect of a night in the cells with some moustachioed sheep-shagger spurred me on, and I managed to up the tempo for the last couple of laps to pass the ten-mile (16.109km) mark, by 75m, by the time the finishing hooter released me from my sweaty exertions. For second place I received a nice heavy engraved silver medal, sore calves and a headache that persisted for the remainder of the day.

I've decided for a number of reasons - not least because I'm a fat old carthorse - to give the marathon I had planned to do a miss. It seems that once you hit 35, your ability to run fast and recover quickly without training diminishes rapidly. A trick decision... give up trying to race, or do some bloody training!

Posted by Damon Rodwell on Mon 27 Oct 2003 | comments are closed

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