Bath Half Marathon. In Pads.

It’s with no little disappointment that I admit to how difficult I made this bloody race on myself. Complacency is not a strong enough word. What should have been a fairly pleasant 13 mile run in the sun I categorically ruined.

First of all, the addition of cricket gear. Well, I kind of had to do this. Having already run the Asics London 5km, Nike and Gyro 10Km’s and the Cardiff Half Marathon in pads, it sort of made sense to finish strong and do this race padded up too. Even that might have been ok.

However, with the race on Friday, Cuzza and I decided to go visit Vicks Nichs at her family pile for dinner. This resulted in a 4am wine-drenched bed-time, and a morning after with a stinking hangover. This would be fine. We’re all fit and recover well.

Mistake number 2 came when we decided that we’d go to Cheltenham to watch the rugby, overnight there and head down to Bath the following morning. Stupid.

A couple of beers at Cheltenham Cricket Club watching the rugby soon turned to a few more and a visit to bar and wok for some greasy Chinese food and more beer. Why knock it on the head there? More beers in a pub with a late licence. By midnight I’d spotted that enough is probably enough. Wrong. I hadn’t counted on Victoria ‘I run better with a hangover’ Nicholson. Eventually I crawled into bed at 1.30am, leaving the rest to it.

6am start. Get up. Dead rat in mouth. Get everyone else up. Dead badgers in theirs. Finally we’re on the road heading to Bath for a half marathon. However, it’s also the hottest day of the year and we’re the most dehydrated people north of the Tropic of Cancer. What preparation!

The traffic into Bath is hideous, leaving us little time to pad-up and find the start line, let alone the rest of our bunch or indeed re-hydrate.

However, eventually us Cheltenham piss-heads to eventually find the others and we are soon under way. For the first 10 minutes of the race I am joking around. Kossak dancing for the crowd, just generally having fun. Then it dawns on me. I’m knackered and I have at least another hour and a half to go. Oh dear.

I’m pleased to say we all made it round. My time wasn’t great, but all things considered we did well. However, never ever am I going to make something that difficult again. If ever there was a lesson in why complacency is bad, consider it learnt!