4 years later...

The very few people who have been following this blog since the inception, know that that in the September of 2008 I won a 10000m  track race at the HK Track League. At the time I was really at the top of my game, in really amazing shape (for my standard). That was also the beginning of a quick downfall , among injuries, more kids, etc...
4 years later, I am still trying to go back to that level of fitness or at least to run 6 months without injuries and see what I can do...

So, last Saturday, I toed the start line for the 10000m of the Round 3 of the HK Track League with no special expectations apart doing a good workout after 2 months of only easy running.
As sometimes it happens in the life, it was one of those days where stars aligned in my favor....
All the "tier 1" runners (well...5-6 in total in HK) decided to join the meeting but on shorter distances, being obviously put off from the idea of running 25 laps in the mid of the afternoon with 28C-29C/80%rH... (on top of that, the local Kenyan runner arrived too late for the start time !)
So the start list was mainly of "tier 2" runners like myself, for example including the likes of HoKi who this year run 2h36' for the marathon and so on... so a solid competition for my level, but nobody really "untouchable".

Once the gun went off, I realized that the pace was something manageable for me and I positioned at the back of the lead pack, just letting the laps go until we hit the 5k mark in something around 17'30"...
Paul, the coach of the National T&F Team was very kind to shout us the laps and soon after the 6k mark, I realized that we were slowing down lap by lap, that the 83"/84" were more and more 85"/86" so I did decide that it was maybe time to seize this opportunity and avoid the race going down to the last 2 laps or worse (where I stand no chance)...
I made a move, putting down 2 fast laps and eventually I realized that I was alone... at the front of the race.
There were still 8 laps ahead of me, and that gave me plenty of time to think about all the past 4 years, about the heaviness in my stomach caused by the lunch (never ever have lunch before an afternoon race !), about what to do if I was caught near the finish, about my hamstring and so on...

At the last 4 laps, I just put my head down and tried to keep my cadence high and sprint at every straight.. the lunch felt almost ready to go out and I still had time wondering if vomiting a lunch could take less than 10-15 seconds....
It was all made more difficult by being totally not clear on how much gap I had: there were many lapped runners and everybody was wearing more or less the uniform of the big local 3-4 clubs (WAC, TCAA, LW..)...

The bell felt like a liberation because only 400m to go...
Somehow I pulled out another 81" lap and the finish was there... I was winning a track race 4 years later... near to turning 43 y.o. and with 3 kids on the stands.

I know that I had a good dose of luck, but the awareness of my (poor) standard is anyway not a problem to enjoy this personal success against injuries and the advancing age...

For the record, this time I pulled out from the closet the same shoes as the last win...these Mizuno Ekidens confirm themselves as "winning shoes" (I guess they scored 4-5 victories in about 10 uses) and ended up with the same blisters from the boiling hot rubber track as the last time...