Well I should be used to it by now, but injuries seem to take forever to heal up, so, I had to miss the opening Welsh league match at my home track whilst I focused on rebuilding my stuffed calf muscles. This involved some hilarious sessions under the thumbs of my marvellous physio Josie Adams, where I got to chew on the couch whilst she nattered quite happily about my daughter Chloe, though I couldn't really hear what she was saying above the screams. Can't have been that bad as she didn't draw any blood this time. Thus the weeks slid by, the bill for ice rose steadily and a fresh bottle if malt entered the fray. The first to anaesthetise the legs was the trusty 12 year old Glenlivet after the Glenfiddich ran out. A beautifully smokey Speyside classic, which normally I'd consume the bottle rather too quickly, but my tastes have drifted further west to the likes of Islay, much to my liver's relief, so I was forced share a few glasses from Oban by way of compromise. Even opening a bottle of single malt seems to present me with undue and totally unfair challenges nowadays.
Needless to say, attempting to extract the cork from the new bottle turned into a minor drama as it disintegrated, leaving chunks floating in the bottle, half stuck in the neck and the rest in my unbelieving fingers. Not to be defeated, I set about transferring the whisky into two clean glass jugs, then picking as much cork out via the use of a tea spoon (had to lick it clean of course), then pouring it all back into the bottle via a coffee filter (Yep, licked that too). Finally I replaced the cork with a similar one from an empty Glenmorangie - job's a good'un, but I still had to test the pouring action. The Glenlivet and the Oban have entirely different characters, but both are more than worth their purchase and demand an evening devoted entirely to each separately, a point that I happily conceded, in fact I'll pause there and go and re-test the theory, yum!
I somehow managed to make the Harrier's team for round one of the Midland league, covering the vault as a minimum. The lead up to the event went well enough, run up was a little inconsistent but it looked like I could deliver 2.80m or so as long as I focused on the event. You've all heard about man's best made mice plans, so that's not what happened. We were short, Tamworth being such a scary place to visit apparently, so muggins got to do the Javelin as well. No problem for a multi-eventer such as my good self I hear you say, apart from the identical start times and it being my worst event. So managed to get started in the vault at 2.50m, but something was clearly up. At 2.60, the run up got up and left in protest as my legs seemed to be embroiled in an argument as to the order things should go in, was the traditional pattern of left-right still viable. I didn't manage any further take offs. What followed in the javelin was just as comical, some people can triple jump further.
I was thankful not to have injured myself, but disappointed in the height, and somewhat amused by the Javelin. Either way I was up and running and immediately set about preparations for the East Wales Regional Athletic Championships, or EWRAC to the locals. I decided to enter my favourite events, no not the Javelin, Long Jump and Pole Vault. I was looking to improve on the two ranking performances as they were both seriously crap, and were probably done using my Grandmother's legs.
In a similar way to my preparation for the BMAF Indoors, I decided on a vaulting session on the Wednesday, indoors of course due to the continued Welsh weather. I turned up to find a group of girls training with the elastic bar set to 3.30m so being a twit I joined in. Things went surprisingly well, got close to clearing it once or twice before finishing. So, feeling good about myself, I decided to sort out the long jump run up. That started well too, hit the board well, second jump was taken at 90% effort and landed about 4.50. Third and final run through was flat out, felt good until two strides out when the hamstring went "twang". Thankfully it didn't pull, though I suspect some damage had been done.
EWRAC was on Saturday, but I went anyway knowing the likely outcome. First event was the long jump, which was a shame, as I thought I'd survive the vault but not the jump. The long jump indicated there was a problem, I had forgotten to bring a run up by all accounts. Ran through on the first, took up tap dancing on the second and did a near standing jump, and lo and behold, I blew the Adductor Magnus on the third. No surprise there then, but what really saddens me is the fact that the worst jump of my entire life won the Regional Championship.
At least it gave me a reason to celebrate with a single malt or six.
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