By Eddie Wetbeak & Ian Steamtrain.
Warming up is essential.
A good running race needs a good warm up. For many people at the St Albans Half Marathon, that involved gathering in a large group, and then, following the lead of a disembodied voice emanating from a loud-speaker, doing a 15 minute high-intensity interval training session.
This habit of race organisers of tricking unsuspecting runners into performing exhausting exercises moments before setting off on a long distance running race has always baffled me, but appears to be common place.
I like to warm up for these events slightly differently, however, and, I like to think, in a more relevant and targeted way. For today’s race, my warm up began at 8:00am, over 2 hours before the race started. Like all good warm ups, it began by trying to reach as sedate a state as possible (not straightforward when in the hustle and bustle of Kings Cross, as I was). When I had reached this calm, peaceful and lethargic state of being, I then like to give myself a jolly good shock. This was achieved by realising i had taken longer buying my porridge than I had thought, my train was leaving in one minute and I was at the very wrong end of St Pancras. This necessitated a full sprint, resulting in one had being covered in hot porridge, and the other in boiling hot coffee.
60 seconds later, I was hopping onto the train, with Ian and Anthony kindly holding the doors open for me. My heart rate was through the roof, I felt close to fainting, my lungs felt like they were burning, and both my hands were actually burning. Warm up complete, I sat down satisfied i was now ready to set off when the Mayor of St Albans fired her starter’s pistol.
The rest of the team also eschewed the HIIT warm up on offer, and warmed up in their own, unique ways. Ian has now outsourced all his warming up to some sort of metal vice-like contraption that pummels your legs into submission. Ant chose to start his warm up even earlier than me, and the evening before attended a Frank Bowling exhibition at the Tate. George tried out glue gunning his hands together and severely burning the tips of his fingers.
Chris’s warm up involved one extremely long lunge performed in the nude in front of a floor to ceiling mirror exactly one week before the start of the race.
I suspect each of these warm ups are as useful as each other. Given it’s a half marathon, and no one in their right mind is going to start off at anything other than a relatively gentle trot, the first mile thereby being all the warming up anyone could ever need. But a good warm up is probably good mental preparation, however you do it.
Next time I think I’ll just pour hot tea over my legs moments before I start running.
The pre-race faffing around is probably my favourite bit. Ian, Ant and I met up with George and Chris at the event, where there were all manner of exciting things going on, so we straightaway all got stuck into the registration stuff, the bag drop area, queueing for the loos, which, quite frankly, are by far the most fun aspects of any event. We also all spent a good ten minutes looking for some water in an increasingly panicked manner. Great stuff.
So numbers neatly pinned, banana skins conscientiously binned, trainers tight and grippy, and mouths dry and parched, we took to the starting area. After a firm shaking of hands, each man went off to find his pen, so he could enjoy a nice bit of kettling. Ian declared that he couldn’t really run anymore, and would likely be running somewhere close to the 1 hour 50 mark. George, aiming for a sub 1:40 time, wandered off with Ian to find their respective timing pens. Ian wandering some metres back from George in the lengthy line of lean long limbed lollgaggers. After a minute or so, Ian was spotted very quietly sneaking through the pack of waiting runners, passing George and disappearing somewhere ahead – it would seem that Ian was perhaps slightly more confident about his time than he was letting on…
This was very nice to see. Ian had coined the term “doing a Burns” (meaning deliberating and significantly underestimating your own time as some kind of stealth tactic of getting into other people’s heads) some years ago. But it had been a while since he had employed this tactic, so it was really nice to see him pull it out of the bag once again. Ian finished with a time that was an honest 20 minutes faster than his declared target pace. Superb tactics..
So bang. And the race began. Ian covers what actually took place in the race in a lovely poem below. But in summary the key points are: (1) it was a very well organised event which we all thoroughly enjoyed, (2) it was a lovely course (although hillier than expected as none of us had actually bothered to check the topography beforehand, and had assumed that St Albans was generally completely flat), (3) the finisher’s t-shirt was free and of surprisingly good quality and design, and (4) Chris and Annabel hosted a very enjoyable bbq afterwards, which appeared to be included in the entry price.
It was heating up, and the lycra’d folk;
Did stretch and gabble in the way:
All nervous were the running ones,
And the hard roads held at bay.
“Beware the hilly sills, my son!
The sudden drops, cambers that catch!
Beware the clammy preparation,
The vaseline slap, the deep heat patch!”
Walrus’ tied their shoes and stretched their hams;
Long time the St Albans miles they sought—
They rested whilst others danced and sang
Sipped tepid water and thought gentle thoughts.
And, as in placid thought they stood,
The starting gun, with a bang to the brain,
Came crashing through the dampened mood,
And panic fast ensued as it came!
Left, right! Left, right! And through and through
The sweaty shoes went flap-flap-flap!
The miles went and came and went
As they trundled from the trap.
“And have you completed the Albans Half?
An ice lolly, a clutch of pens!
A heavy medal, a short massage!”
They stood around all grins.
It was brilliant, and the tired rogues,
Did eat and back-slap in Chris’ Cave;
Then with wobbly legs and soaking clothes,
They slipped back beneath the waves
It was generally agreed that we’d all be doing it again next year.