Monday 22 January 2018

Junior Kent County XC

Leggy this morning but forced myself outside into the rain to Norman Park for Park Run.

Bumped into Messi on the start line but he was tempo’ing and frankly I was not up for it. He ran off into the distance with Briony, a sub 35 minute 10k runner and also gunning for a sub 2.40 marathon.

Ended up running most of the way with Ed and managed to hold 3.50s for 19 minutes working quite hard. Bloody hell!

It was freezing so after finishing I just turned round to get home as Jack and I needed to be on the road by 11 to be in Dover for his race. It rained the entire way there and scarily we lost traction on the motorway a couple of times with all the water surface.

The race was at one of the Military Private schools and first impressions were that it was horribly muddy. A quick scan of the opposition and it was abundantly clear that everyone was wearing spikes. I walked back to Jack who was trying to keep warm in the car. ‘Dad’ he announced ‘I am going to run in my trainers’. ‘Errrrr son, NO you’re not’ I said, ‘that’s a bad idea - get your football boots on!’.

At the start we bumped into my old coach Andy Frankish when I used to make up the numbers with Mark Steinle (2.09 London Marathon in 2002), Jonathon Murray and co. It’s because of people like him giving up their free time that British Athletics is still even remotely competitive. I introduced him to Jack as my coach when I was his age! It was weird as and as if I was still in 1985 watching myself being introduced to him all over again.

They set off super quick as these junior races always do for 2 circuits with each having one small lap which meant we could see them 4 times. As if running in football boots was not a handicap enough, he has also done zero training relying solely on his football fitness. He ended up in ~#70th place which included boys in the year above. As a May birthday there will have been some boys 18 months older and it looked that way.

The finish was a classic as a boy outsprintd him whilst projectile spewing over the steward. Full marks to him for effort.

The first thing Jack said was ‘Dad, can we please please go home?’ and secondly: ‘that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done’. We headed straight to the car and were out of there 5 minutes later. Now tuning into Radio 5 Live for the Arsenal Palace game our day went from bad to worse when by 3.22 PM we were already 4-0 down.

Nevertheless, nice one on one time with #2 with chats in the car about Australia and other things. What made it for me was after Jack having had a warm bath he came down stairs to give me a big hug and thanked me for taking him. That was a nice touch - I would never have done that at his age!















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