Great North Run 2014

So 2014 was the first year that Bupa have offered to put me up in the elite hotel which was a nice surprise. It was offered after I had been emailed yet again to be told there was no room at the inn. It was slightly bittersweet when I found out my club mate and friend Justin Levene hadn't been put up. The rooming policy at Bupa Great Run events seems to be a bit of a secret - if one actually exists. In my mind the rooms for wheelchair athletes should be given to the fastest athletes first and people doing it for the challenge should have to pay their own way, in the same way you wouldn't expect Mo Farah to be told to book himself in to a hotel whilst fun runners were put up in the elite hotel. The race missed out on another British athlete up front as Justin couldn't afford to make the journey to Newcastle for the race with no support from Bupa, big big shame.
  Anyway, I was one of the first athletes to arrive at the hotel on the Saturday. I checked in and had a quick nap in the room before going down to get lunch. I met up with Simon Lawson on the way and we ended up having lunch together, it was great to catch up. Simon is a great lad and an impressive athlete -he went on to finish second in the race the following day. After lunch I went down to the riverside to watch the street athletics. It's great to see athletics pulling in the crowds. Although it was a sad day do see Andy Turner in his final race, what a cracking athlete for Team GB. I had a good mooch around the city, up and down those bloody hills and then headed back to the hotel to wait for the other athletes arriving.
   I tried my best to direct a few people around the diversions to get to the hotel. I was told several times people could see the hotel but couldn't get to it. I have to admit I felt a bit smug that I had set off early and didn't have the stress of thinking I was going to miss the technical meeting. Although Martyna Snopek didn't find my smugness amusing when she phoned to say she had got to the hotel but couldn't find a parking place and I asked if she had "tried the car park?" .... she hadn't tried the car park incase you were wondering. My new sponsors were the next to be directed in by me. Dan Whittaker and Sanjay Joy of Alpha Fitness and Rehab based in Rossendale have been amazing with me and nursed me back fitness after all my injuries this summer. I have been so so lucky to get this deal, free personal strength and conditioning sessions three or four times a week, roller sessions, massage, acupuncture,  taping and they have even found a welder for my chair! Dan and Sanjay made the trip north to support me in the race. They massaged my dodgy back just after they arrived and also delt with Martyna's sore pec/chest/tit. The technical meeting was next on the agenda which was the usual boring description of the course and the warning about the final downhill on to Southshield's seafront. The good thing about the technical meeting is we get fed after it! I had a good chat in the queue for the food with Stephen Kiprotich, the 2012 Olympic marathon champion , from Uganda. He was really interested in how fast the chairs go and we compared pb's, he did drop a bit of a clanger when he asked if wheelchair athletes had to train although he was genuinely interested in how many sessions and miles we fit in each week. The food was the usual pre race chicken and rice - I love both so the blandness doesn't bother me.
After food everybody drifted back to their rooms, I had been allocated a room with Mark Conway who is always a pleasure to share with. It's been fantastic to see him improve so quickly these last 18 months or so. We sat up chatting for a couple of hours then I decided to try and get some shut eye. I was really nervous as the race had snowballed in significance for me during the build up so I knew I was going to struggle to nod off. The Great North will always be special for me as I used to love the Rossendale Harriers coach trips away when I was 5, 6, 7 years old and the odd one as a teenager to watch my old man in his favourite race. This year's race was my comeback after a shitty couple of months with injuries, health troubles and chair breakages. It was the race that fell closest to the 25th anniversary of the day my dad took me for my first training session at Rossendale Harriers. It was also my first race after picking up the alpha sponsorship and I wanted to do the lads proud.
I woke up on race day ready to go, I hate eating breakfast on race day; nerves make it really difficult to eat but having Martyna there was great - I was worrying about her injured tit which took the nerves away from me! I had the now customary espresso - if it's good enough for Dave it's good enough for us all, even if I do think it tastes crap! After breakfast Dan and Sanjay taped up my back and Martyna's, er,  tit and then we waited in the hotel lobby for the coach to take us to the start.... and waited. .. and waited. Eventually we got on the coach and made our way through the 55,000 runners who were walking to the start. It does make you feel like a celebrity especially when people are trying to look at who is in the coach. When we got to the start we were warned that because the staff had got us to the start late the warm up time would be significantly shorter than normal. As soon as we were out of the coach we were oined about getting in our race chairs ASAP! Not a chance I was getting in my chair until I had been for my last nervous pee! Pee done, I transfered into my race chair and managed about a quarter of my usual warm up before we were called to the start line. I hadn't seen the starting grid so I just got myself in a good position on the second row behind the Spanish lad who I thought would win and therefore start well, I was right on one count he won but he was slow off the mark.
  After the TV introductions I glanced up at the clock above the start line and noticed it had ticked past the official start time, I got into the set position as fast as I could and a split second after I was in position the gun went, no warning, no on your marks just the gun! Most were not ready including Jordi Jimenez the eventual winner who I had lined up behind. I rammed him and shouted something along the lines of "c'mon! ". The balls up at the start really got me worked up and I hammered my pushrims and despite the problems had a cracking start, I was in 6th for the first mile or so feeling great. At 2 miles I was in a nice little group with my roommate Mark, fellow northerner Bret Crossley, Shelly Woods and Jade Jones we briefly worked well together but as soon as we got to the hill that climbs out of Newcastle to Gateshead Stadium I didn't feel my usual self. I tried hard to stick with the group, but I let them slip away - not by much but too far for me to draft off the group. When the road flattened out I tried and toiled and worked and gritted my teeth to close the gap on the group which was starting to break up. The gap narrowed but I didn't close in on the athletes in front before the next climb. That was it, I knew I would be pushing a mainly solo race for the next 8 miles.

   Resigned to the fact I was going to have a tough race with no drafting I started to settle in to a rhythm that I thought I could keep going at and beat my PB, the old morale got a boost when I went through the 10 km mark almost 2 min under my 10 km PB. Doing sums in my head and taking into account the second half of the race is slower than the first I thought I was on for a PB of about 2 min and finish in the high 51's. That gave my pushing a boost and I started to close the now large gap between me and the athletes in front. At about 7 miles some idiot controlling one of the showers the runners go through to keep themselves cool decided to turn it on right before I got to it. I'm not sure why it was in the main carriageway as all the others were switched off as I went passed and positioned in a bus stop pull in but it was impossible to avoid. The guy who was controlling it got a mouthful from me and my gloves and pushrims got soaked which seriously slowed me down for the next half a mile or so. The next mishap happened at the 8 mile mark and it was a major mishap. My chair frame developed a crack in the frame on the wheel arch, each time I pushed the crack opened and the frame flexed so much the wheel touched the side of the frame making a squelching noise and slowing the chair down. I could of pulled out of the race there and then, for a split second I did consider it but it was only a split second and I'm pretty proud that it only took a split second to decide to nurse my chair to the end. A year ago I would of pulled out of the race with no hesitation. The next mile or so of the race I spent trying to find the maximum about of power I could hit the pushrims with that didn't open up the cracks, it was a fairly decent pace on the flat but on the ascents it was pitifully slow. Climbing slowly allowed Mel Nicholls to catch me, I did get back passed her on a flat part of the course and even opened a gap but another long dragging climb meant she overtook again and disappeared off in to the distance. The final hurdle In my race was the steep decent, unfortunately I had to take it really steady because I didn't want my wheel to fall off at 30mph!  Once I was down the hill my final mile was fairly quick but the cracks had cost me a few minutes.  I finished 9th in 54:36 which was 3 places and 70 seconds better than last year.
When I crossed the line I was completely devastated,  I thought I had let myself and my team of supporters down. I like to cross a finish line and know there was nothing more I could have done, I like to throw the kitchen sink at races and finish without the energy to hold my head up. In this race I was fairly fresh at the end and I hadn't punished my body. Instead, it was my chair that couldn't go any faster. Once I had calmed down a bit I began to come round to the idea that me and my chair are a team and we are only as good as the weakest link, we had done the best that we could do on the day and to beat last year's time with only three and a half weeks training and a broken chair was a pretty good result.
After the TV interviews and the awards ceremony we were transported back to the hotel for my favourite part of the Great North Run weekend; the post race meal in the Hilton. I love the food there, it's amazing and chatting about the race with all the other athletes is great too. The drive home was less great!

Bad day at the track

Today I found out what happened to my wheelchair and why it has been making creaking noises. I had gone to the track at Burnley to train and after a long warm up I began my reps but I started hearing my wheel catching again. It's so annoying when that happens to me, it last happened at the national championships in the 1500m and it cost me a lot of time. Tonight as soon as I got up to speed for my reps I could hear the same noise again. It sounds like the squelching noise you make when you walk through deep, wet mud wearing wellies as a kid.
When I got out of the chair to have a look at what was happening. I could of cried when I saw the crack that had appeared. It runs round the weld that joins the wheel arch to the U frame (the U frame joins the wheel arch to the main shaft of the chair) I am not sure if it can be fixed.
  I have had a lot of problems with my chair since being run over by David Holmes whilst out training. I was pushing along Broadway in Helmshore whe the driver pulled out of a side street on the opposite side of the road. He crashed in to me and carried on driving even though I was punching the side of his car. Eventually I was flipped upside down and the driver still carried on for another 50m or so.
  David Holmes was found guilty of driving without due care and attention, given a small fine and six points on his licence.  I had dislocated my shoulder, damaged my collar bone - permanently, wrote off a set of wheels and damanged my chair frame which was brand new at the time.
  Over a year later I am still pushing a damaged chair which is affecting my training and racing. I've had to miss most of a session tonight because of the damage. It's totally disheartening :(

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Rock n Roll Half Marathon, Lisbon 2013

Report from October 2013

I’ve just got back from my first international race as a wheelchair athlete in Lisbon, Portugal. It was an invite only race so I was pretty surprised to get an invite 8 weeks ago as at the time my PB was a next to useless 77min.

  I am part of the Weir Archer Academy which was set up in April by David Weir and his long term coach Jenny Archer – I’m sure David needs no introduction but his (and now my) coach is little known outside disability sport and that is a huge shame. Jenny coached David to six Paralympic golds, four of which were in London last year she has also guided him to six London Marathon wins, four world records and British records at every distance from 100m to Marathon! She also worked with the famous Wimbledon Crazy Gang and was known as the ‘woman who tamed the crazy gang’! Anybody who is considered to have tamed Dennis wise, John Fashanu, Lawrie Sanchez and Vinnie Jones is obviously hard as nails! Jenny and Dave wanted to get involved with this whole legacy thing that we had drummed into us all during the London Games, they took it upon themselves to set up a group where disabled athletes can get world class coaching and access to all the backroom support that international athletes get.

Being a member of the Weir Archer Academy is what got me invited to the race along with four other WAA athletes; My mates who did the Manchester to Blackpool push with me which CLEM members helped with Kirsty Grange and Stuart Bloor along with London based athletes Ash Archer and Justin Levine. When I got the invite I spoke to Jenny and we said if I accepted I needed to get some serious work done as 77min wasn’t an acceptable PB, I spent a week on a new training program whilst I decided if I should accept or not. I loved training twice a day and doing the extra milage so I decided to give it a crack. All I had to do was find £160 for my flights everything else was paid for by the organisers.

Five weeks into my new training plan I did the Tyne Tunnel 2km and Great North Run. The Tyne Tunnel race is the fastest wheelchair race in the world and I finished 9th overall and 3rd Brit. I was over 2min faster than last year and enjoyed every moment!

Two days later I did the GNR one year after the course almost made me quit racing because of the pain I was in for a few weeks after the race. This year I was in a new chair custom built to fit me exactly, I was fitter and lighter. I really enjoyed the race this year and  smashed my PB with 55:36 and 12th place. I think that is the one and only time I will ever have a 22min PB! The weekend in Newcastle gave me a huge boost of confidence and made me knuckle down and train even harder out on the roads of Rossendale and down at Barden Lane track for the last 3 weeks building up towards the Lisbon race.

I flew out on Thursday morning, had quite a few people in the airport doing the ‘trying not to stare’ routine. I guess a lad pushing a wheelchair with one hand whilst pushing a race chair along in front with his spare hand complete with suitcase, spare wheels and pump stacked on top is a fairly unusual sight! Whilst sat in departures the mother phoned to wish me luck and remind me that last time I competed abroad I ended up in a wheelchair so I “wasn’t to do anything stupid” – yeah, cheers for that mum!

We were met at the airport in Lisbon by the race staff who had our chairs in a van and us in a car on the way to the elite athletes hotel in no time. The hotel was the same one the England football team stayed in during Euro 2004, my apartment had three bedrooms, two bathrooms a kitchen and large lounge with a wrap around balcony. I shared with Justin and Ash, who are both fairly new to the sport like me. We had time to explore the hotel, test out the indoor pool and sauna, pick up a start list and google everybody’s PB’s before tea. The dinner table was like a who’s who of wheelchair road racing with most of the athletes being paralympians. Friday morning was spent chatting with the foreign lads and picking up tips on everything from gluing sandpaper to gloves for grip in wet weather to how much pressure to put in tyres on a rough course like Lisbon. At lunch time all the elite athletes able bodied and disabled were taken to a press conference at the Hilton. I have to say sitting through two hours of foreign politicians making speeches which looked to be of the mutual back patting type was extremely boring when you don’t speak a word of Portuguese, a few of the Kenyans fell asleep!! The speeches were followed by the papers taking photo’s and once we were all suitably blinded by the flash bulbs we were led to the dinning room for lunch. I managed to make an idiot of my self on the way by pulling a hand rail off the leather lined walls of the lift – still it got a cheer and a round of applause from all the other wheelers waiting for the lift!

Lunch made up for the two hours of boredom a thousand times over, swordfish and it was b.e.a.u.tiful and once I knew it was definitely free the northerner in me came to the fore ‘owt for nowt’….. I had an apple crumble for desert, followed by gateaux..followed by fruit salad… followed by chocolate cheesecake. All of which were great! After stuffing my face at the Hilton we had a couple of hours rest before a training session at Portugal’s national athletics center which was built into the side of a hill which meant it had virtually no wind at all. The track was old and worn which made it really fast for chairs as there was no give in the surface. Jenny had us do an easy 10km, it was hard to hold back on such a fast track when I felt so fit, I didn’t want to give anything away to my competitors so each time somebody was near me on the track I stopped pushing and started doing arm drills instead.

Saturday morning we had another session on the same track, just an easy 5km. As soon as the minibus and van stopped I was out and in my chair, I got the 5km done whilst others were still messing about getting sorted before starting the session. That suited me and helped me with my tactic of not giving anything away. In the afternoon I had a massage from the race physio on a niggle in my shoulder that Garry Wilkinson has been working on at home. I ate my own body weight in rice and had an early night.

On race day I was up and ready for breakfast at 6AM, WAA athletes and Jenny had a table to ourselves and she did a great job of calming us all down. Once our chairs had been loaded all the elite athletes traveled to the start in convoy with a police escort, complete with out riders who closed off roundabouts and traffic light controlled junctions to let us speed through. We had a 200m long stretch of road on a hill to warm up on which was soon filled with nervous looking athletes, about 5min before the start we had our final team talk from Jenny and then made our way to the start grid. I was 4 rows back but there were another 4 rows behind me so it was the furthest forward I have ever started a race. Once in position Jenny went round her athletes and whispered a final instruction for each individual. She has a way of getting the best from us and I used my instruction through the course.

Once the gun went there was the usual mad dash for the racing line, my main targets were Stuart who was next to me on the start grid, Bret Crossley who beat me by over three minutes at the Great North and was on the row in front of me along with Shelly Woods who also beat me at the great North by a few minutes (however old we get and however good they are, lads don’t like losing to girls!). I knew lads in the row behind were gunning for me so I started fast and shot around Shelly before the roundabout  followed by a steep climb 80m into the course. Stuart stuck by my side up the climb and I think we were both a little surprised that Bret had stole a march on us, Bret is faster than both of us but he isn’t usually as strong on the climbs. we spent a kilometer or so closing the gap on him and by the next hill we had caught him and passed him. Stu then worked at the front for three kilometers or so and I hung on like hell, to be honest he had me blowing big time but I didn’t let him go. By kilometer six we had caught a Portuguese athlete but Bret had caught us, I noticed the Portuguese guy pushing one handed for long periods and it annoyed me he was keeping up with me so I hit the front of our group and tried to drop him. After going past the 10km mark in 24:29 (1min 37 under my 10km PB) I decided I’d done my bit and asked Stu to take over at the front. I tucked in behind him and unfortunately he took us straight to a huge pothole, Stu hit it, I rammed Stu and hit the pothole but Bret and the Portuguese one armed bandit managed to swerve round us and keep their speed.

We spent another two kilometers closing back in on the pair of them when Bret’s tyre exploded – it’s awful seeing that happen to a mate but there is nothing you can do about it. The one armed bandit almost stopped pushing until we caught him, he really didn’t like doing any work at the front of the group. At kilometer 14 I was starting to think about the finish line and the fact that my training buddy has a much much faster 100m pb to me. I’d never been with him at any point other than the first 5km in my other two Half Marathons but I decided to try an wind it up ‘Paula Style’ and drop him before the finish. I worked my backside off and opened a gap on three occasions but each time the course threw a hill at me. Stuart only has one leg so his power to weight ratio is slightly better than mine as I have two useless limbs to carry around with me, he closed the gap each time and the inevitable happened…. We hit the last 300m and he shot round me along with the one armed bandit who was now pushing with both arms again. The Finish was an experience to say the least, it was made with small uneven cobbles complete with speed bumps (who the hell speeds on cobbles?) it was like riding rodeo and I seriously thought I was going to end up out of the chair. Stu and the part-time one armed bandit both got given the same finish time and they had taken 6 seconds out of me but I was mega happy with my 8th place and 54:26 taking 1:10 off my three week old PB on such a rough old course was a good day at the office.

At the finish line everyone was comparing war wounds and missing kit, there were GoPro, Garmin, race gloves, push rims and tyres that had been lost whilst trying to stay seated in the home straight…. luckily I had only lost my Jelly Babies that I hadn’t had chance to eat.

That night the Weir Archer crew hit the hotel bar with Shelly Woods and her fella. We had a few beers and swapped stories just like I would have done after a big race as a runner. It was a cracking trip and I learnt so much from both my coach, the other athletes and the organisers (who did a cracking job). I can’t wait for my next opportunity to wear the Clayton vest abroad.