It’s a comfortingly short blog today. So I bought myself some spikes to try a few more track races. Turned up at Crownpoint and saw your Cameron Tindle, Guy Learmonth, Paul Sorrie, Shaun Butler and Annabel Simpson and the like and felt like a pretender. I’m no track runner. The 3000ms were to be last and there was a delay of over an hour which didn’t help me either. I played at warming up beside all these track runners and felt like a fraud. But I remembered some old lines from a poem I have shared before. My aim tonight was to avoid last and to beat 10.30 at the third attempt. 

“If you think you are beaten – you are , If you think you dare not – you don’t”.
Ran it through my head as a mantra. It works you know. On the starting line of the slowest race of 26 runners and made a better start. It was too dark to see my splits properly without my specs so ran by feel and by the clock at the finish line. Many people passed me but I dug in, finished well and got my new PB in 10th place in 10.23.51. Nice boost for the head. I’m not great at this track thing but I enjoy it and I’ll keep chipping away. Still a pretender but it’s good fun.