At the championships

The weather looked very favourable on the drive up to Brum on the day before the BMAF Championships, The family decided at the last minute that it was an excellent opportunity to go shopping, a very worrying proposition as my wife is a professional buyer and my eldest daughter a fasionista. The first problem was how to get the poles into the Campanile hotel, the reception - bar area would just allow me through but the turn into the room was too tight, so they ended up coming in through the fire doors and  spending the weekend in their conference room's kitchen after being hoicked up the middle of the stairwell and swung flamboyantly onto the first floor landing much to the consternation of the young shift manager who had clearly never seen vaulting poles before. An interesting end to the week.

Saturday dawned dry and breezy,  so I had high delusional hopes of decent performances in the 100m and the long jump, although how I was going to handle the simultaneous timing of both events at 11:30 was still a mystery. I managed to find Alexander stadium via the sat nav, but as I drove in to the park the voice resembling an old head Mistress squawked 'Turn Left. Now Turn Left" and that resulted in me turning into the allotments - darn it. So I did a U turn and found someone had locked the gates behind me  - trapped! Took me twenty minutes to find a friendly gardener to let me back out again, and yes I do believe he was having trouble not laughing, although I got the impression I was not the first visitor of that type.

I parked up and went to find Maurice Doogan to sort out the clash of events, though the result was somewhat predictable, apparently it was simple to do both as long as I report for both early. This was somehow going to enable time travel, I felt like I was standing in front of an oncoming bus. Still I warmed up and registered for both events much to the obvious annoyance of the official in the call room, clearly I was only doing this to wind her up. So out I went for the Long Jump in the knowledge I was in heat one of the 100m. A run up was measured and the board struck once out of three run throughs, strange that was consistent on Wednesday. Predictably round one started with a no jump as my toe seemed to find its way out of the front of my spike into the pastercene, so cancelling out the crater produced near 5m.

Now this was a problem as I expected to miss round 2 due to the 100m and needed a decent mark to make the cut. So partly panicked, I slipped quietly away to run the now straight final of the M50 100m. I can't say I brought all my concentration with me, and was thrilled to see I was now to run against not only the current World Champion Pat Logan, but also the current UK No. 1 Steve Beak and ex European champ the indefatigable Donald Brown, and the rest of the field were also residing well up the Power of 10 from me. This did not bode well, nor did the sudden realisation I had jumping spikes on as I did my practise starts. A quick change and a few jangling nerves later and we were called to our marks. Set and the gun goes and I left Paul Tterve in the blocks, although he corrected this error on his second stride as the field headed for the finish the quick way leaving me to battle for 8th with Ty Holden, so 9th in a season's best of 13.34 then. I was so far back Tom Phillips had to use a more powerful lens to get me in the same shot as Donald, Steve and Pat (The1-2-3).

I ambled back to the jump in time to catch the second round, so I recorded a safe 4.60m whilst still gasping for breath and feeling about a stone heavier due to the appearance of lead cladding on my legs. Round 3 was another no jump, but I made the cut so I was able to continue this stunning run of no jumps into round 4 although they did measure the 3m run though it produced. Round five saw the return to hitting to board and what turned out to be my best of 4.67m as round six was predictably another foul. I don't think time travel materialised, just dead legs, the only good thing was seeing my friend Paul Guest win the event after struggling with injury through the winter.

I left Alexander Stadium a little disappointed, and returned to the hotel for the obligatory ice bath (well cold bath as I had no ice) before going to meet the wife in the Bull Ring for dinner and to find out how deep the national debt had suddenly become.

Woke early on Sunday, day 2 of the BMAF Champs, largely due to the noise the rain was making outside, this was not going to be a nice day. I got totally soaked putting the poles on the car and had to change before checking out. This all meant the vault would be indoors, both pools I expect, which was to my advantage as that is where I have to train in Cardiff, not because of the rain, but because we only get to use the outdoor bed when there is Z in the month. Anyway, after shaking hands with the new Commonwealth Champion Steve Lewis, we managed to get down to business pretty much on time and I was able to enjoy a bit of a battle with Alan Easey, Richard Phelan and Nick Walker. After some decent first time clearances I topped out at 2.90m a gnats whisker off of 3.00m which Nick cleared. This left me 2nd with Pool 2 yet to come.

Allan Leiper has a habit of doing this to me, and today was no exception, only this time John Andrews joined in. Allan was injured and was very doubtful about competing at all, and John was still absent with just 10 minutes to go to the start, the silver medal beckoned. Then John rolled up having been delayed on the countries motorway network and the competition began. 3.30m is normally easy for these guys but not today, after a couple of failures both John and Allan cleared it on their second attempts, John going on to win with 3.60m thus leaving me 4th to sweep up the bits and pieces of hope dotted around my feet.

Oh well, to the bear and his conveniently placed fridge.