Blog

It's Bank Holiday today which naturally means I'm working in the morning. Couple of appointments and then that's it.

My plan today is sit in the sunshine for a bit and then go for a walk and have a beer or two outside the Split Chimp. Gail's idea is to do jobs in the garden and go and buy some new garden furniture.

Gail is of course, right. We haven't done anything in the garden for ages and it needs sorting, so a day doing garden jobs and then a trip to B&Q to get some new garden lights and a rejig of the furniture.

Sadly B&Q seemed to have no garden furniture in stock and the old fella working there told us it was all stuck on the straight of Hormuz. I'm not convinced this is true and I don't think a lot of garden furniture is manufactured in the middle east but he seemed fairly sure about this so we went with it.

No running today, it's rest day and it's too hot.

Working in the morning.

Haircut at lunchtime.

Working in the afternoon.

It's a lovely day but I'm not running.

Thought about picking up my kettlebell.

Actually now I've typed this I'm going to go and pick it up, right now, I'm gonna do it.

Doorbell just went.

Haven't got time now.

Definitely going to pick it up later.

Didn't get round to picking it up.

Friday evening and I've made, salad, halloumi and pitta breads for tea. 

Bottle of Malbec at the kitchen table with Gail and the kids whilst listening to a 90's indie playlist.

As Ice Cube once said "today was a good day"

He also said a lot of other quite rude things in the same song but we'll gloss over those.  You do not want to know what Kim was doing...

It's Hartlepool Half day, where do I start....

Deep intake of breath.

The drive there was nice enough with the lovely Gent's who kindly picked me up.

To steal Rob's summary of the race "I liked the bag drop, went downhill from there".

Firstly I'll say I'm not in great shape, I was hoping (a few weeks back) that I'd be in 1:30-1:35 shape but I'm not, realistically I'm closer to 1:35/38 form and that's fine and that's what I planned to go for today

We get to the start and queue to pick up numbers, why don't they just post them out? Makes life so much simpler and then I queue for the toilet, there are 850 entrants and probably 20 portaloos and the queue is huge. It starts at 9am and the start is half a mile from where we are. I'm still queueing at 8:45 , I toy with skipping it and doing a Bain during the run but Simon's got a nice car and he doesn't want my pissy shorts on his lovely seats.

I run to the start and get there with about 10 mins to spare, the starting arch isn't up and nobody is entirely sure where we start or which direction we go. Then the arch goes up and we congregate at the start as a car comes driving in on the closed road straight towards us. This is a sign of what's to come.

We start, it's very narrow and hard to get past people. They take us out on a small pier thing, it's quite narrow and we're all on the left so I move to the right for more space, then the lead bike comes hurtling along shouting at everyone to move across. They've got runners going out and back on a stupidly narrow part of the course within the first mile, I'm starting to think this ain't a great event.

The next stretch is pretty nice along the sea front with lovely wide paths and I get into a decent rhythm. Matt's up ahead and Phil comes past looking strong and I relax and forget about the early shitty bits.

And then.

Then we come to the end of the prom path and we turn into a large carpark, we run to the bottom of the carpark and loop a cone and run to the top of the car park and loop a bastard cone and run to the bottom of the carpark and loop another fucking cone and run to the top of the fucking carpark again. Who in the world of fuckery thought this was a good idea? Then out the carpark and onto the road. My mind starts working overtime, are we going to do that shitty carpark again? Surely not, who in their right mind would inflict that upon anyone.

It's a little hilly, not horrendous but not pleasant and my god it's hot. Not a bit of shade on the entire course and I'm sweating like the chunky fat lad that I am, I'm not built for these conditions and need a drink. There's a water table up ahead, it's small and covered in cups and manned by one person. As I approach he holds out two cups and the two people in front of me take them, I hold my hand out expecting him to get another for me, he doesn't. He just stands there. I grab a cup and it's got a thimbleful of water in it, not even a mouthful.

Then we're back on a nice wide and long road and I start to get into a rhythm again.

And then.

Then they turn us off the main road, up a small hill and 150m into a housing estate, loop round yet another mother fucking traffic cone and then 150m back out and onto the main road. What the fuck.

My completely made up sceanrio of how this all came about...

"Let's organise a half marathon road race in Hartlepool"

"Great idea, start and finish at the marina would be lovely with a stretch out and back along the coast"

"Can we fit a half in?"

"Well I've mapped it out, it's about 9 miles for a decent route so we just need to add 4 more, we could extend the loop at the top end before you head back and that would add maybe a mile or so and we could move the start to have it where the finish is as the roads are better and that would easily add at least a mile or two and then coming back towards Hartlepool we stay on the main road and come back round, it would be great"

"So that's were doing yeah?"

"Nah, I was thinking we could just get the fuckers to run up and down that big souless carpark 4 times and loop round cones and for good measure we'll do it on the out and again on the back bit"

"Nice! So that makes it a half yeah?"

"Not quite, I'll send them into that housing estate and back out again, not far in mind, just up the hill and 150m in and then back out again. We got more cones we can use?"

"Yeah I've bought 700, cheap as fuck to be honest as I just got those tiny little ones kids use for football practice"

"Excellent work, so we're heading back in and almost done. What I was thinking here is to send everyone straight past the finish and into another business park. We can send them on a left right turn maze for a bit and then back out"

"How shall we get them to come back out towards the finish?"

"You still got cones yeah? Fucking brilliant, a cone it is"

"This sounds great, how many marshalls do we need for 13 miles?"

"Oh I reckon about 10 should do it, make sure they don't like marshalling and don't point people where to go until the very last moment but stick a couple of nice ones in just to fuck with people"

"I'll order some high vis vests with Wild Deer on them and get some big arrow signs for them"

"Or, and bear with me here. Or we just dress them like spectators and put tiny little arrow signs on Lampposts instead ?" 

"Water tables?"

"Oh god yeah, it's forecast to be scorching so maybe a table or two and have a couple of people on each one so they definitely can't fill cups and pass them out quickly enough. Actually maybe the runners can just fill their own cups, that'd be fine"

" Oh and make sure each cup has no more than 17ml in it, don't want to waste any water"

"You my friend are a fucking genius, runners will pay for any old shit"

And that's how it went, trust me.

Back to the course....

Back to the carpark and this time we do it in reverse, I go wide on each stretch as I don't want to step on the ankle breaker speed humps and then back onto the seafront and now just for good measure it's windy.

From 9 miles I'm done. I'm slowing up badly, I'm hot, I'm sweating like a fat lad, there are no more water tables to be seen and I just want to be done.

I haven't seen a mile marker for ages, I'm heading back onto that stupid pier bit so I have the excitement of another traffic cone. Man I fucking hate traffic cones.the course here is really twisty and turny, I'm on my own and the nearest runner ahead is out of sight and I can't see any marshalls or certainly none that you can be sure are actual marshalls.

And now onto the home stretch, the finish is just round the corner and as I dont have distance on my Garmin I have no idea how far I've run. Turns out I'm not finished, oh no. They send us again off into yet another business park and loop round another mother fucking traffic cone and then back. I change my Garmin screen and I've still got 800m or so to go. I'm done. I'm ready to stop and walk but keep going, my pace feels like I'm crawling along. Come into the finish and get a shout from Susan G and then I'm done.

1:41 something I think. I need a can of coke but naturally they just have a coffee van so instead get a black coffee with sugary syrup, thanks for the coffee Phil.

Would I do it again? No

Have I done worse courses? No

You can't plan for the weather, you can't necessarily plan the route you want but you can get the basics right. You get twice as many marshalls as you think you need, you hazard tape every obstacle, you buy big signs to warn of hazards and big arrows pointing out the course on the twisty bits.  And yes I'm probably being very unfair to the Race Organisers and I have no doubt the Council weren't helpful but come on man, the basics, get the basics right.

Carpark fucking zig zags for fucks sake, twice, fucking twice, what the actual fuck.

And that's the blog for now.

I might blog leading into the Great North, I'm a pacer this year doing 1:45 so maybe a short blog for that.

Or maybe not.

Fucking carpark zig zags man, fucking zig zags up and fucking down 4 times and round some mother fucking cones.

Twice. Did I say we did it twice? 

Fuck me.

Oh and I'm still too fat to fit in my soar vest so had to wear my large poly vest. This will be sorted by GNR. Monday is kettlebell day and I'm kettle belling.

Zig fucking zags.

In a fucking carpark.