Friday night, there I am cooking a cauliflower cheese for a group of friends TLH & I meet with once a month. It's a Church thing and we've to feed nine people. Kitchen floor has vinyl tile, my shoes have leather soles (yes darling I should have taken them off). The boiling choux-fleur has to be al-dente, just so, and I lift the large cast iron Le Crueset pan from the hob and turn towards the sink so as to drain it. I take a step. A small fragment of cauliflower gets between floor and shoes and suddenly it's like my front foot is on roller skates. Down I go, doing the splits and desperately trying not to dump the scalding water over my legs, tummy and crotch. I end up in a sort of hyper-extended lunge whilst almost literally bending over backwards. The pain in my lower back as it went into spasm, took my breath away! But I didn't drop the dinner; slopped some water hither and thither. Was in pain during the meal and didn't sleep well. Ow! Ow! Ow!
Saturday comes. I've paid £20 quid, months back to enter a school's PTA fundraiser 10k because it means I can run it in bit of NT property not normally open to the public. "The Clandon Park 10k". Like an idiot I go. It takes 75 minutes to drive the 22 miles to the venue and my back is aching the whole time. TLH and I swap seats as soon as we arrive and I jog off to get my numbers whilst she parks the car. Only time for a five-minute-warm-up and off we all go. six odd km in and the runner two in front trips over a root and goes down hard, the following run falls over her and like a knob I try to hurdle of the pair. I make it but on landing POW! Back spasm and in two steps I'm on all fours. They pick themselves up, dust themselves off and run off. Not a word to me. Charming. I can only think of obscenities as I crank myself slowly back upright. Chuff this hurts. I shuffle forwards wincing with each step. The shuffle becomes a jog, the jog a trot and the trot after a few hundred metres becomes a run. Well what passes for a run when I'm doing 10k. And somewhere in the middle the pain stops. Leaving the woods I see the other two casualties on the other side of the field. "You are going down" I declare and I up the pace til the % max HR on my Garmin gets a little alarming. I dig in. I catch them. "You ok?" asks one as I pass. "Yer" is my grunted reply before I pass the second. "No thanks to you" I think.
I decide the last 3k will be run as an intervals session. Muller myself for 500m ease of for the next 500 then muller again. I overtake loads of other folk, and my back isn't hurting anymore and I give it some beans for the finish - which isn't easy as it involves running around bits of the campus though narrow gates and underpasses.
I finish. Gun time is 20 seconds slower than my trail 10k PB. Garmin/Strava says my time was around 40 seconds faster. And I haven't had a peep out of my back since I finished.
