Mr Stumble Stumbles!

This week, I've mainly been taking things reasonably easy so I didn't get a blow-out to prevent me running The Stourbridge Stumble. On Monday, I ran an easy five and Wednesday an easy three and a half. Everything seemed to be ticking over nicely. What's more, I borrowed my wife's iPod shuffle which I have found really helpful. It's like when I run without music, all I can hear is that voice in my head moaning about the time of day, wouldn't it be better if I hadn't started out in the first place and why not make it a shorter run today. That voice gets drowned out with even the fairly low volume on the Shuffle.

Mon: 5 miles, 47:49 minutes 9:33 pace. 16C HRAve:141 HRMax:155
Wed: 3.67 miles, 33:51 minutes 9:14 pace. 14C HRAve:148 HRMax:166

I took the rest of the week off so as not to overdo things before Saturday.

Race day finally arrived! This particular race is run at 6pm, which means a lot of finding things to occupy yourself with through the day. Family life generally means that Saturdays are busy anyway, and this particular one also coincided with my eldest daughter taking a keyboard exam and then heading off for a sleep-over. The logistics of this meant I had no-one to come along to cheer me on or take photos, so apologies for the lack of any footage in this report!

This race is a pretty low tech affair. My number had already arrived in the post last week, so All I had to do was show up at the start line. No chips, nothing to sign in. Nada. The starting point was a big "START" banner strung between a couple of trees in a public park and I spent 15 minutes shooting the breeze with a bloke, talking about a possible 10K in September, at Enville, slightly closer to home. Then, the massed hoards - well about 300 runners - followed the starter up to the trees. There was a fair old mix of club runners from at least 4 local clubs, plus various unaffiliated folk like myself. I knew my target for this was somewhere just under 60 minutes so I lined up at the back.

The course was loosely described to me before we started. A hilly grassy start through the park, then local roads and then into countryside. It's muddy in parts and there are some sections on sand, which would probably be better this year than last due to the enormous amount of rain we've had here since Thursday. I really mean enormous - we've had areas flooded, railway sidings turned into canals, abandoned cars and everything. My own back garden resembled a swimming pool for most of Friday - we've never seen so much standing water out there.

Thankfully, although it had rained on and off through the day, it stopped an hour or so before the race, but surfaces were very wet.

Then we were off. The first section was fast, even though I was telling myself to keep the pace under control, but once you're with a bunch of people surging forward, you can't help keeping that pace. By the time we exited the park, I'd got some better control and was hitting around 9:30 pace. We had already settled into groups and once through some streets and onto an open field, I could see all the leaders streaming away into the distance. However, I was with some club runners, so I couldn't be doing too bad!

As we neared the end of mile 1, I passed some people struggling up a grassy hill before entering a very narrow section, very overgrown with barely any elbow room between the vegetation, and a lot of nettles! This was now trail running and there were gates to negotiate and then a road. Unfortunately, we had to stop for about 30 seconds as the marshals let through several cars who has waited for the leading pack to go past, but then we were off again and into more open countryside. Much of this was uphill work and we followed the trail past a water station and then along the edge of a wheat field. By this time, I'd passed a few more people as they slowed back and kept on the tail of a guy in black top and tights who pulled me up through the field. Once through there I was passed by a couple running and then followed them past the man-in-black. They then slowed their pace within a half mile and I spent the next mile as we headed into muddy trails switching positions with them.

However, the trail became a fair incline and was very slippery with inches deep churned up mud and no dry path. A lot of people in front started walking which allowed me to catch up and pass a few. I was refusing to walk any of this and just plowed on through mile 3 until I hit the pond at 3.8 miles. Here the trail went through a 20ft long puddle the whole width of the trail. All you could do was edge round the side or plow through the unknown depths. I edged, but lost some time doing so. Then another climb and onto a sandy path that steadily rose back up to the central high point of the course. That was just knackering, but again I passed 3 or 4 runners, keeping my stride short and moderating the effort.

Then we were at 5 miles and it was all downhill, returning along the sections we had already run. As we ran through the nettle-alley I joked with the guy in front about it and then the pace started to pick up again as we were back into the open field. There were three of us in this little group now, a guy in a blue top and a tiny lady in a pink top. Pink top had passed me as we exitted nettle alley and had pushed on 20 yards in front. I kept on Blue top's right shoulder and refused to let him get away. We stayed like that for a half mile weaving through some roads. At this point, I'd fully recovered from the hills a mile back and was feeling the best I had through the race.

As Blue and I increased the pace, we closed the distance on pink and then we were back in the park. 300 yards to go and I realised I had a load of gas still in the tank. I put the peddle down and passed blue and pink turning into the last stretch and sprinted for the line like I'd sat on a wasp. I don't think they tried to keep up!

At the line, I tried to read the "official" time which looked like 59:06. My watch made it 59:25, and I started my watch when I crossed the start line, a good 10 seconds after the leaders. Anyway, as my head was a bit fogged up, I'll use my clock time as I don't think I'll get an official time posted from the race.

Once through the shoot, I stopped to speak to the guy in Blue - Mick and shake his hand as really he'd paced me through the last mile. And then it was over.

Splits were (bearing in mind a lot of tree cover and some lost GPS)

Mile 1 9:13
Mile 2 9:57 (including a stop for traffic)
Mile 3 9:29
Mile 4 10:03 (including swimming alligator swamp)
Mile 5 10:29 (sandy hill climb)
Mile 6 8:48 (thanks Mick!)
final 0.2 1:23 (7:29 pace)



















All finishers got a commemorative horse brass, and this one is mine.

All in all, I really enjoyed the event and am looking forward to more over the coming months.

Mr Stumble.