A tale of two cities . . . (the bad bit)

So, I had a fantastic race and got to see my first concert in five years, that was the good bit, what was the bad bit? Well first, I missed Mr. Lacer, it’s not that much fun racing with no face to look forward to at the finishing line, instead I had to be happy (and it did make me happy, I’m sad) running past the back of Ikea, as we ran through the various back streets, industrial estates and retail parks of Wembley. As I ran through the final kilometre (bless the spectators at the final corner, as we were running they were yelling “The end is just round the corner. You’re nearly there,” which was such music to the ears, as I had no idea where the end was), as I turned that final corner and ran up to the finish line, I literally felt a lump in my throat of happiness and I rang Mr. Lacer twice within five minutes of crossing the line!

But when I really missed him was trying to get home. Now I’m not too timid about wandering round London late at night on my own, I count myself as fairly savvy enough to avoid trouble but that doesn’t necessarily mean I like doing it, specially when I’m not in my own patch and I don’t know Wembley that well. There were still road closures, so I couldn’t get back via the bus stop that I’d arrived on and it took a while to find a bus stop, including one abortive wait at a bus stop where it turned out the bus I was waiting for wasn’t turning up there that night (a notice would have been good). When I finally found a bus stop (remember that thanks to the race and the weather, I was also cold, very wet and tired), I got on the bus, all seemed well, bus stops at a bus stop, all well and good, bus driver gets out of his cab, takes his yellow visibility jacket off, puts his coat on and then puts the visibility jacket back on top, all very well I think, he’s probably cold. But then he gets out of the bus, fag in mouth, without telling us a thing, no automated bus announcements or anything. He wanders around outside for a bit, is he on a fag break or something? Then after a little bit of wandering around he then turns the engine off and disappears! So the passengers are all stuck there (although thankfully he left the back doors open), without a clue what’s going on. Meanwhile another bus (different route but same direction) pulls up behind us and pulls off again and I kick myself that I could have got on it, so I get off the bus (most passengers are still on the bus though) and I wait outside in the cold for another ten minutes for the next bus. Which thankfully took me all the way to my interchange, where my bus to home came quickly afterwards, when I saw that bus, the bus I take pretty much everywhere in day to day life, I could have hugged it!

So I don’t think I’ll be doing the Human Race again unless they change the start time (although it was good running towards the lit arch) as it means it’s difficult for families to come and watch and it’s a nightmare to get home again. The whole wandering around Wembley trying to find a bus and then the bus driver disappearing whilst I was on the bus made me just feel that I was getting too old for wandering round London in the middle of the night, cold and wet. Much as I consider myself a Londoner (lived here for well over ten years now and both sides of my family have roots here), it was one of the first times I questioned whether I could live here for ever. Standing at yet another cold, dark bus stop in an area I didn’t have a clue about, found me fantasising about that small holding Mr. Lacer jokes I want, somewhere within reasonable reach of a city like Cambridge or Oxford (both cities I love), where I can spend my evenings with my family in front of a cosy fire having done nothing more exciting that day than pulling carrots. But I’ve had a busy summer, you wait, give it a month and I’ll be complaining I’m bored!

It was lovely coming home though, specially as Mr. Lacer had been a complete love and completely cleaned the kitchen!

A tale of two cities . . . (the good bit)

. . . and both of them are London. Yesterday I ran the Nike Human Race 10K at Wembley. Before the race there was a concert at Wembley Stadium, where I’d never been to before, so that was interesting. I stood on the pitch, not many people can say that. Wembley Stadium was smaller than I thought it’d be, I bet not many people say that either and it impressed me how close the seats, at least at the bottom, were to the pitch. The building itself was almost futuristic looking.

Notice that grey sky

 

The concert consisted of sets from Pendulum and Moby. Pendulum were excellent, despite everyone needing to conserve energy for the race, they had everyone dancing. Their bass connected literally with your heart beat. I wasn’t too familar with their stuff, although I recognised their track Propane Nightmares, which is one of Mr. Lacer’s favourites. As I was dancing, hands in air, screaming my head off (along with everyone else I hasten to add), it hit me that the last time I’d been to a concert was when pregnant with Girl Lacer and suddenly I wasn’t mum of two, with an ever decreasing budget and name labels to sew on, I was me, it’s nice to feel like that every now and then

Pendulum

Moby on the other hand wasn’t anywhere near as good, which surprised me, as I used to like Moby back in his day, but I guess the guy’s entitled to move on with his stuff and I only vaguely recognised a few very remixed tracks, although when he ramped up the bass it was ok. You could tell that people in the audience were getting impatient (probably not the best of gigs moments before a race is meant to start) and when the female singer announced they had one more track you could here a few people groan, poor Moby! Meanwhile I couldn’t help but think of that Eminem song where he raps;

You don’t know me, you’re too old, let go
It’s over, nobody listen to techno

(Just like last weekend when I broke the habit of motherhood and went to the theatre and saw Hamlet which had Patrick Stewart in and the last play I had seen pre-motherhood also had Patrick Stewart in, in another tenious link to the past the last concert I’d seen pre-motherhood was Eminem).

The race itself started just inside the stadium, running out through tunnels to the outside. Just as my wave started it of course started to rain, heavily (it had been raining on and off all day), so by 1K I was soaked and could hardly see because it was dark and my glasses were covered in water and were fogging up, so I managed to run through numerous rather large puddles, including one which I didn’t see coming up at which when I ran through it, water splashed right up to over my knee, just about finishing off my trainers from being the remotest bit of dry, so it was squelchy socks for the rest of the run. By the time it stopped raining, I think about at 4 or 5K I actually didn’t notice as I’d developed this most horrible stitch in my side, in fact it was more than a stitch, I think I must have pulled a stomach muscle, as everytime I put my right foot down (the pain was on the right hand side of my stomach) it hurt like hell. So I had to slow to a barely jog and luckily after a while it worked itself out and I could pick up speed again but then it reappeared a few K later so I had to slow down again until it went again. Although later when I was walking home from the bus stop it was beginning to really hurt again and today it is very twingy.

I was using my Nike sports band (although I was very nervous about finishing it off in the rain, like suggested in the forums I’ve been reading, but luckily it looks like it’s survived). I was surprised though, my sports band has clearly been under estimating how much I’ve been running as every kilometre I did it under-reported by between about 0.02 and 0.25. So by the time I got to 10K my sports band said 9.2K, so I’ve been running further (and quicker) than I thought. I had estimated that I’d do the 10K in 1hr30 minutes, I actually did it in *drum roll* 1hr20 minutes! Below is my time graph (ignore that it says 9.2K), you can see that I started out fast, probably too fast for me as I was swept up by everyone else and where I had to slow down with my stomach strain.

According to Nike I was ranked 21674 (although they list my time as 1hr27, even though they texted me and said my time was 1hr20). I don’t know what my rankings were out of but weren’t a million people meant to be running?

Today, well like I said, my stomach is aching a bit and my left ankle is sore (can’t seem to handle it when I go over 8K). I have my brand new T-shirt I got from Nike as reward, marking ‘The Day I Raced the World’. I know I’m going to be very proud of that T-shirt, the day I ran my furthest and beat my personal best 1 mile (knocked 2 seconds off) and 5K time

Well that was the good bit, the bad bit later, my laptop is deserving of only being thrown out of the window and it’s so slow it’s taken me ages to type this. Excuse the lack of editing and spell checking but if I try and use the spell checker I’d scream right now.