Dead Runners society race report
Oxford City Council Fun Run - wednesday
13th December 2000.
I celebrated Shelley’s birthday
slogging through the mud in the centre of Oxford.
Evenin all
Tony here in cold and windy Oxford, I didn't
want to be here today as it was the beautiful Shelley's birthday but for the 2nd
year in a row my work has taken me away on her birthday :-((((
Ever since I arrived here in Oxford I have
been training on Wednesday lunchtimes around Christ Church Meadow in the city
centre. This is a wonderful place to train away from the traffic on a nice
running trail by the river and one of the more impressive of the Oxford
University colleges. We alternate every other week with either 1 lap fast (1.125
miles) or 2 laps fast (2.25 miles) as a handicap run, good training. I run with
a bunch of runners including Oxford University eurodead Bob Wells. A lot of the
wednesday running crowd work for the city council and every year they organise
the "Xmas fun run", a straight race (no handicaps) around 2 laps of our handicap
route for city and county council employees. Guest runners are also permitted so
today Bob and I and 9 of our university colleagues ran in the race.
We jogged to CCM as we usually do on
wednesdays to find a lot more runners than usually turn up, lots of strange
faces with the usual suspects today. A bit more jogging to stay warm and a bit
of hanging around before the start, the mayor of Oxford set us off on our
way.
A mad cavalry charge at the start opposite
Christ Church, I set off pretty hard with loads of runners zooming away. After a
minute or so things settle down and I start to pass runners, before halfway I
passed Esmail and Alex from the wednesday lunchtime crowd, they usually set off
fast but they set off far too fast today. Rather wet and muddy underfoot with
all the recent rain but as it was a race I just ploughed straight through the
wet bits, around halfway round lap 1 Caroline, one of our lady runners, came
past. I hung in there and on some firmer ground towards the end of the lap I got
past her. Halfway in 7.14 and round we went again, feeling pretty tired by now
but still racing and passing runners. I slithered and splashed my way through
the mud on lap 2 and passed Tim, another wednesday regular. Towards the end of
the lap I got overtaken and I was running by myself down the home straight, ran
in very hard and crossed the line in 14.33, lap 2 in 7.19.
Very very tired on finishing, I ended up 18th
out of 86 finishers, that really hurt, that was a real race. Bob finished 5th.
Due to all the recent rain parts of our handicap route were flooded so we had to
make a detour from our usual wednesday route but I ran 8 seconds faster than I
have ever done before for 2 laps. A pretty good run in the conditions, we all
jogged back very slowly afterwards.
Even though I had a good race today this has
not been a good day. I found out just before I left work this evening that a job
at Cambridge University which I had applied for and seemed very likely to get
has gone to someone else :-( Not good news, I was looking forward to getting
back to living in Cambridge with Shelley 7 days a week, not a nice thing to have
to tell my beautiful girlfriend on her birthday :-(((((((
bye tony....
Dr Tony Bell Tony@shells.demon.co.uk tony.bell@chemistry.oxford.ac.uk
Weekends - Milton, Cambridgeshire. Midweek, Dept of Inorganic Chemistry, Oxford
University. http://www.shells.demon.co.uk/tonyweb.html
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