Evening all,
Bravo RFJ! Wardi, Pammie, Hilly, well done!
Hope IM is doing ok.
Hello SSING.
Me? Sitting here in front of a nice fire, with son1 and gfriend reading, after decimating a lasagne and rice pud that should have fed twice our number. (Mr. S had to go out again, poor thing.)
Why? Hereward relay, and team stickless makes it round again. Son1's gfriend took the first short leg (6+miles) in sleet that turned to driven hail. Mr. S followed on for the longest leg, 11+ miles, departing in hail that turned into thick snow. The fens are not the place to be in driven snow. Ask Tom. The roads were covered, and the car behind us slithered into a ditch. (A runner's car of course, nobody else daft enough to be out in that stuff). We stopped, nobody hurt, tow truck summoned, teammates on the way, so we carried on to March and the start of my patch.
The snow happily had stopped, and the wind (even more importantly) was from behind, so I stumped off rather numbly in the company of a woman evidently my senior by some years. I watched her as she slowly shrank to a red dot in the distance.
It wasn't going to be a good run from the start. The sciatica was there from the start. The night before a nerve in my groin had begun to twitch, the same that we nicknamed "the crumple button" when I was pregnant and the infants would occasionally kick in that direction, causing the leg to collapse. No, I am not pregnant.
The first half of my patch was on tracks, often grassy and snow covered. The worst of the ruts were frozen hard, which helped. Happily the hard work was over by about 7 miles, which left only 3 on roads when I was really short on push.
I was dead last, but I had got there. Even better, as a measure of avoiding hypothermia amongst the marshalls, all 4th leg runners were sent off at 1:15, whether or not their third leg runners had made it in, thus the pressure was off. I would not have been happy otherwise.
I am content with the day. Last. Might not like it, but it beats the hades out of not running. I knew it was going to be tough. I met the senior woman in red at the end. She sounded very discouraged. I'm sorry about that. She is often around at the races I get to. I hope she feels better after getting warm and a good feed.
It's not easy getting old. You have to learn to look at things in a special way to find the heart to go on.
Lassie the whippet made his way through the Ultimate Mud (and had things to say about it too) in fine style.
For a family day out, can't be beat.
Take care all.
