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.
