Wednesday 4 July 2012

Blog#N


England and a Flat Tire

So where the hell have I been? Sorry folks for the delay, lets recap since the last post- I went to England, Raced a half marathon, came home, 1500 night, and a flat tire! 

So England, I went back to the old country! My father moved to Canada many moons ago and so I have a lot of family over there.  Grandpa was part of the sports committee 49 years ago in the village near where he lives.  He helped to organise a half marathon during the weekend festival known as club day! Turns out it’s the oldest half marathon in England.  And Grandpa wants me to win the damn thing.  And Last year after being second I had to head back for another try.  So I invite my best bud Kyle to come with me on this adventure, Kyle’s been with me to Texas twice and we have had many nights of ridiculousness.  So we arrive in England and my back and legs were tight as hell from the plane ride over, it was not a good scene.  It was also cool when we arrived and it was raining-typical England, it felt perfect for racing a half.  So for race day lets break out the sun and crank the thermostat up to 28 degrees.  It got rough.  Before 3 miles my back was tight but I was rolling pretty well then on 68.30 pace.  Oh did I mention it was windy too gah.  8-10 miles were rough and the pace slipped.  From then on I cruised in as my legs were cramping and hurting.  I knew I was not running fast so nor catching the leader so I whooped it up a bit as I passed the local pub crowd and enjoyed the atmosphere of “Club Day”  final time of 1.12.01.  So not really happy with that but satisfied with the effort with how I had felt leading up to the race and how rough I was feeling early on. 

While in England Kyle and I tried to take in the local culture.  Euro cup group play was on.  We hit up the Coach and Horses pub for the game against Sweden.  We were not prepared for what we walked into.  England in soccer crazy and from what we were told Freckleton is a soccer crazy village.  So the pub is packed standing room only.  And these fans are intense, all sipping away on gin and tonics and ales, swearing at the TV. Old ladies, sweet little old ladies are dropping F-bombs at the TV.  It was awesome.  Once the word got out who we were, everyone was talking to us.  Great friendly people in Freckleton!  So Grandpa rented Kyle and I a car while we were there so we could tour around,  lets set the scene 1-cars in England are smaller to begin with 2- I am 6’1” a broad shouldered 165 and Kyle is 6’5” a solid farmer 240 3-Were manly men. So the Rental car lady takes us out to our car WHAMMY it’s a Fiat.  Yeah a little Italian hatch back that would fit in the back of my truck.  We drove the shit out of that Fiat, poor poor  Fiat.  Other than race day basically all we drank was tea and beer.  But it was all quality dark ale, basically a food group.  It was a great time.

We had an exciting adventure on the way home, Watching the screen with the map and the little plane I noticed we were doing a circle somewhere close to Toronto, we continue this circle and as we start our second circle the Pilot comes over the mic and says “theyre having some trouble in Toronto, if we don’t get called to land in 5 min we are going to have to abandon because we are running out of fuel” and that was it.  I look over at Kyle, “did he just say we’re running out of fuel?”  Sure enough we had to land in Ottawa because Toronto was closed from a wild thunderstorm.  Do you know how much fun sitting in an airplane with the air off in 35 degree heat is? For two hours!  Lets just say it was not fun.   It made it so I didn’t get home until 1 am. Grrrr

So after arriving home at 1 am I slept until 7.30 I woke up feeling great, full of piss and vinegar as they say.  I did a little shake out run and decided I felt good enough to race that night in a 1500, seriously its only a 1500.  So anywho  I raced a 1500 feeling tired, it sucked, I felt like I was working hard the entire time. Ran 4.04, no fireworks,  no gas in the tank.   For all those out there I don’t recommend the Sunday-Friday Half Marathon-1500 double up, it’s a doozy.

After the 1500 this spot on my leg really hurt.  You see the thing was that spot had started hurting a couple weeks before.  It hadn’t gotten much worse and cold tubing seemed to be keeping it at bay.  But It was now really sore. Anyways let’s not beat around the bush here and get to the meat of the potato-I’ve got a stress fracture in my left shin.  But looking back maybe it was the 65 laps I raced on the track this summer that got me.  So I feel like a bit of an idiot for not taking care of it weeks ago.  I would like to think of myself as a sub-semi-elite runner and I thought I was getting mature and smart at listening to my body.  Damn you Track, you are an evil temptress luring me from the trails I love into lust after fast PB’s, Damn You!  And now you have had your fun so you kick me to the curb, bruised and damaged!

Who am I kidding the Spring track session was great, thanks to Eric Gillis for encouraging me to race on it last fall when I was down.  It was great, lots of fun.
 
So yeah where does that leave us....Oh so I am taking some time here to get this cleared up asap and then hopefully salvage a fall season. 

I made the most of the Long weekend, I caught up with a couple of great friends and had some drinks.  Josh Lumani turned 22, I love this kid, he is as suave and cool as anything.   He had a little shindig, it was great, Met his mom, she once made me banana bread-best banana bread in the world!  Josh writes a blog you should check it out  http://jolu26point2.blogspot.ca/2012/07/new-one.html  .  Josh pretends to be a bit of a badass gangsta but he’s got a heart of gold. Beauty of a dude if you asked me.  He is also a ridiculously talented runner.  Kids got fire and passion but he is just too damn humble.  More talent than me thats for sure.   Similar to me he made great improvements at Fanshawe College.  He tries to play it all cool, weekend warrior type but this dude is good, and he is just opening the can that is his ability! I hope he stick at this running thing. Hes gonna be good! Stay tuned!

Lumani’s mom made a slide show about his life, it was great but in it she had a quote, it said something like “I love running, I hate running, usually I am somewhere in the middle”  I thought that was very good.  Now for my Friend Wild Bill Petrcich I will admit that I would be found in the Bell curve of this data more to the “I love running side”. 

So I am going to be healing up my leg and trying to stay cool this week. 

Make the most of it Folks!

John