This is a rather unusual Christmas. I’m concentrating a good deal on an important competitive exam that would land me with an important step up in my career – if I come first – or leave me right where I am for probably a good number of years if I don’t come first. More on this, maybe, in another blog entry later on.
This Christmas is also unusual compared to the last three years because I have again managed to run one of my very favourite road races in Malta, the Mdina-Spinola – now ‘rebranded’ as M2S. It was the race that I had participated in for the most consecutive years – 12 or 13, without missing one – before leaving the country. This year the date of the last Sunday before Christmas was favourable, in that I was able to be here on the day of the race. I had been therefore looking forward very much to this race, since a good number of months.
I almost missed it. I picked up a backache while struggling with the luggage on my way to the airport on Thursday, and had to decide during warm-up if I was fit enough to run. Nowadays it seems I’m unable to prepare for a race properly, without having to overcome various fitness problems…
I was of course fit enough to race, and in fact started too fast, and knew I was running too fast, but didn’t slow down, and feared I wouldn’t be able to hold the pace till the end. The down side was that I didn’t enjoy the race very much, since the beauty of this race is that I normally start overtaking rivals up till the finish. This time, having started fast I was unable to increase my pace, and kept the same position almost till the end. It was only in the last couple of kilometres that I was overtaken by two or three rivals, but the finishing time proved that I had done an excellent race. I had been increasing the finishing time by about one minute each year for a good number of editions. This time, FOUR years after my last participation, I clipped off more than a minute from my previous time. Not bad at all…
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