Saturday 27 September 2014

By a Hair

Despite Gillette’s current marketing campaign, ‘by a hair’ is a not a well known saying.  But it aptly describes the fallout of a speculative conversation on Tuesday night’s fun-down.

Training partner and replacement great rival Dan Robinson and I are so evenly matched in performance that our head-to-head looks staged. Dan arguably puts in more miles, additional static bike training and deploys aerodynamic enhancing full body grooming to compensate for his advancing years. I on the other hand prefer to rely on the gung-ho of youth, luck and the unteachable art of deploying two extra gears with the finish line in sight. 

Through this we mused what the difference between our cumulative PBs might be if totted up.  I didn’t have to wait long.  On opening my email on Wednesday morning, the result was waiting for me:

                        Tim                 Dan
800m                2:12                 2:12;
1500m              4:23                 4:23;
Mile                  4:34                 4:40;
3,000m             9:05                 9:07;
5,000m            15:37               15:30;
10,000m          32:59               32:50;
HM                   71:53               72:18;
Marathon        2:34:47            2:34:31.
Total                 4:55:30            4:55:31.           (+1)

1 second.  The difference of a dip for a line here or a widely-taken corner there.  Neither of us had expected it to be so entertainingly close.

Of course when I arrived home, quivering with excitement and unraveled the contents of that email to my girlfriend Ellie, she looked at me partly in sympathy, and mostly with the sort of distain she normally reserves for my half-hearted washing up. 

Clearly lost on her was the poetic beauty of two rivals, who after 53 miles of individual racing were separated by a finer margin than the result of the 1989 Tour de France.

Or perhaps I need some side-hobbies. 



NB: The blog was purposefully published on Saturday 27th September 2014: If Dan improves his PB at tomorrow’s Nottingham HM, and I fail to beat him by the 25 seconds I was able to gain in the final mile of last year’s event, the pendulum will swing once again.