Ox Half, 2021

We arrived at the Rushmore Estate in good time on an unseasonably chilly and blowy May morning. Luckily, the ever-prepared and lovely Mrs S had an emergency woolly hat in the car which kept me from freezing before the race began. As a bonus, we managed to park almost right next to Alice.

Here we going running races in May on a cold and windy morning

It had been a bizarre and rather fraught week. On Tuesday morning I was nearing the end of a pre-breakfast bike ride when I passed a dead deer lying right in the middle of the A27. After a bit of indecision I cycled back to it and heaved it off the road and onto the grass verge with one hand holding the only leg that wasn't covered in gore. Twenty seconds later, I was feeling early warnings of a twinge in my flank. Six hours later, I was in all sorts of trouble. Everything was painful. By Friday morning I still felt like I had a mountain to climb before I was fit to race, but one Mrs S treatment and forty eight hours later, I was feeling much better.

Back to the plot. The socially-distanced wave start process was a bit slipshod, but I set off on a steady descent in the first wave. Heading back uphill through Rotherley Bottom, a big periglacial dry valley, I was decisively overtaken, and then again after about 5km. I was nominally in third place, and there was no sign of anyone else as I recognised familiar scenery from the Larmer races, which took me up Straight Knap and around another big dry valley.

There was a long, attritional climb back up to Rushmore and the halfway point, and then a long downhill along a gravel track. I was entirely on my own at this point. There were a couple of signs pointing off to the side, but they seemed to be designed for people heading the other direction, and I assumed that they related to a different Ox race taking place over the weekend.

I went through a longish section without any signs, and I started to fret that I had missed a turn. But then I passed a sign and all was well.......... until the speedy runner from Rotherley Bottom overtook me again, saying 'I think you've missed a section'.

I was now in a right funk. I really, really didn't want to finish the race having cut corners, and moreover I was now in danger of finishing in second rather than third position. I kept runnimg while mentally thinking about my options. Just keep going? Wait at the finish for #2? This felt morally better, but I could imagine causing confusion at the finish area.

So I did something I've never done before in a race. I turned around and headed back the way I'd come. I crssed paths with a confused-looking bloke quite quickly and kept going a bit further for good measure before turning around again. I think it was about 400m each way. I just hoped I'd done enough to cover the distance.

It was another long and tedious straight-line ascent through enclosed woodland before turning off and snaking alomg an undulating narrow track in woodland full of wild garlic and a tooting cuckoo. There was an ambiguous sign that could have been pointing either down the main gravel track or a small path. I stayed on the main track but soon felt anxious that I'd gone wrong. I kept going, sensing I was near the end and could find my way to the finish somehow... but a yellow sign appeared and all was well. Into the finish field and a gentle descent to the line in 1:43:33.

I hadn't even felt my back, and my tender tendon had held up. I'd slowed in the second half, but this was the furthest I'd run in almost 6 months and I had much to be thankful for. I've no idea what the result was, but my shortcut and resulting shenigans will go down as one of stranger race experiences.

At the finish line with Alice and Mrs S