After my sage advice to the Three Counties guy at Milton Keynes (don't set off too fast), I received some useful advice of my own today from Neil Ward: If it hurts, stop.
We'd been talking about how we were doing, and my dodgy knee was mentioned. This would be its first test for a couple of weeks. So on a lovely sunnny morning, just after the clocks had gone forward, it was quite warm at the start of the Sandy 10. I decided I would start fairly slowly (although now I think about it, that's the best way to aim for a PB on this course anyway), and see how I went.
I didn't feel anything at all in my knee. For about 90 seconds. And then it felt a bit stiff. OK, that's not pain, so I'll carry on. After a mile we got to the sharp uphill (see Statto's blog - well, where else? - for the elevation profile) and I was quite happy to jog up that. Actually, as it happened, I was catching Statto up, so I obviously wasn't taking it as easy as I expected, but I felt fine. In fact, I noticed, my knee wasn't hurting at all. Hurrah!
At the top of the hill I met Sibbo and Shirley, doing excellent supporting work, and at two and a half miles were Astrid and Steve, out on a bike ride from Hitchin. Lucky they chose to come to Sandy. It was almost as if they knew we would be there.
I could see the 3 mile marker when my knee made itself known again. This time it was a sharp pain, and not one to ignore. I stopped. I walked. I waited. Then I jogged a bit. And it still hurt. I crossed 3 miles in not much more than 19 minutes, so I hadn't lost much time, but my race was over. A few more steps and I decided it would be a bit silly to carry on.
So for the first time ever, I dropped out of a race. I took my vest off (don't worry, I had a T-shirt underneath) to prevent any rival clubs seeing a stricken NHRR member, and tried to persuade all the rest of the NHRR members that I was going to be fine (they all asked as they ran past - what a nice club we are!).
And I went back to have a proper chat with the McKeowns, and wandered back with Pete and Mrs C, and found that if I jogged slowly, and restricted the movement in my knee, I could actually move OK. And I wasn't being overtaken all that much by runners in the 70-75 minute range. Damn, I thought. I could have carried on, and perhaps Lindsay wouldn't have beaten me. And I could have had one of those nice blue long-sleeved tops. (Actually, I'm sure if I asked nicely I would probably have been allowed one, but that wouldn't be right, would it?)
But no. Resting didn't fix my problem, so on to step 2. Let's see if Sharon can fix it.
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