Page 57 - Phonebox Magazine January 2007

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Phonebox Magazine 57
Cardiac Arrest in Weston Underwood
The Ouse Valley is made up primarily of fast going with only minor obstacles and
clay, sand, gravel and water. If you are not sure about this fact or would like to experience it at a more basic level then you should have joined the other 175 people who did the ‘Cardiac Arrest’ run at Weston Underwood on Sunday 12th November.
The Cardiac Arrest run was billed as a ‘multi terrain adventure race’. Read that as ‘off road driving course’ but without the pre requisite super charged 4x4 or Chieftain tank. Instead you had your legs.
Having signed up only one week before I drove over to Olney from Bedford feeling more nervous than I have for a long time. The directions themselves seemed more like those to an illicit rave (not that I have ever been to one) than a running race.
Signing in at registration I saw various areas taped off and wondered if maybe there was going to be an off road driving or motorbike trials event later that day. At the race briefing I found out they were for us.
It being Remembrance Sunday I felt in a bit of a quandary as to whether I should be doing this but somehow the two minute silence seemed all the more poignant when I considered that 60 years ago people would go out and do what we were going to do for fourteen hours a day, every day for years whilst other people tried their hardest to kill to defend our basic freedoms so that I could grow up in the luxurious world I now inhabit. And they didn’t always get a choice. I did.
The start was designed to lure you into a false sense of security. It was reasonably
thanks to lovely autumn sunshine a fantastic day to be outdoors. Slowly things got harder – ploughed fields, quarries, tunnels, ditches, small rivers and ponds. You know the kind of stuff.
The best they saved for nearer the end as you were really thinking ‘eight miles is quite a long way without the obstacles’. Not content with what nature provides someone had used a JCB to scoop out three enormous trenches and then let them fill with water. A water buffalo would have thought twice about this. When I got up to my chest and then fell over I wished I was a water buffalo.
Scrambling up the bank alternately shivering and moaning I could hear the shrieks of the people behind me as they passed the critical crutch depth that made all the difference between uncomfortable and agonising.
A few more ponds, ditches and general shoe sucking clay bogs later I popped out of the tunnel. Climbing out of the ditch leading to the tunnel one of the marshals said “Come on, there’s the finish, only three hundred metres, give it your all.” What he neglected to mention was that the last three hundred metres was uphill across a ploughed field.
I am by my own admission a poser. If there is a camera around I will put on a good show no matter how knackered I am. On the photographers website my finishing line photo looks like a drunk falling out of a pub door.
Why the ‘cardiac arrest’ run? I tried to pace myself because of a couple of nagging injuries to my knee and ankle. My heart rate monitor showed me that I had run at 102% of my maximum working heart rate most of the way round and burned one and a half times my normal daily calorific intake in an hour and twelve minutes. I felt dirty, tired, stiff and – elated. It was the best fun I have had a in a long time.
Unlike many people I enjoyed cross country at school. Partly because we use to nip to Lee Prescott’s house, pretend to smoke cigarettes, listen to Deep Purple and eye up his older sister. This brought all that
That’s me number 113!
excitement back but without the excursion to Lee’s (his real name so I apologise if you or your sister read this, Lee).
I will be back next year for sure. Hopefully with others. Anything I would recommend they have? – tetanus jab and a big swig from the loony jar! As for me I am going to spend the year perfecting a waterproof, fleece lined jockstrap which if it doesn’t improve my time might at least guarantee that my new family gets beyond one!
Tom Barwood
Event organised by www.heartbeat-events.co.uk • Photos by www.pr-matters.net