Tamadaba Trail Tour (T3)

I have been putting off writing this post for a while now...but here goes...

The first edition of the Tamadaba Trail Tour holds mixed emotions for me! The race covered a 20km course around my favourite part of Gran Canaria, Tamadaba. It is always a pleasure to run in such spectacular scenery, however unfortunately this race did not end well for me!

The week before the race was my 30th birthday which I have to admit I may have over indulged a little in my alcohol intake, leaving me very run down for a couple of days and making me miss 4 days of training. I was in two minds about whether I would run the race or not! the evening before the race I managed to run for 15minutes and felt 'OK'. So I decided that I would be on the starting line!

I started the race at my usual fast pace wanting to make my competitors work from the gun. Two runners came with me, Jose Salom and Matias Ojeda. I kept pushing but felt in my body that things weren't going exactly how they should be. Jose and I started to pull away from Matias, I didn't know much about Jose's ability apart from that he was a road specialist and a former Ironman. His road speed became apparent during a road section of about 2km, he quickly pulled away from me, however I didn't worry too much as I knew I would be a lot stronger on the descent.

Hitting the top of Tamadaba (1400m) I was told that Jose had a lead of about 2mins which I thought I would catch easily. Coming off the top off the mountain I quickly increased my speed on the easy descent as I wanted to catch Jose before the technical descent section. Things seemed to be going well and I was feeling confident. However things suddenly took a turn for the worse!! I lost my footing and fell forward landing heavily on my right shoulder and left hand. Straight away I knew something was wrong....but something inside me told me to get up and run!! my shoulder and hand were in agony  but I kept running. At the next drinks station I told the organisers that something was wrong, but I decided to keep going. I managed to keep my speed up quite well  and I was able to minimise the pain by clasping onto my t-shirt keeping my arm across my body.

At the begining of the technical descent, which was about 5km from the finish I stopped with some of the organisers who tied a few t-shirts and jackets around me to stabilise my shoulder. I decided that I would not be able to run any more as the adrenaline had worn off and the pain had become too much. Two spectators very kindly escorted me down the mountain giving me water and painkillers...

It was not a very enjoyable descent firstly watching Matias go by and then the other runners. Everyone offered me words of encouragement as they passed by. For some reason I decided I wanted to finish the race running and as you can see from my face this was very painful.

I was whisked straight off to the local clinic where they re-located my dislocated shoulder and bandaged up my hand. I went back to the competition centre to thank the organisers and the other runners for looking after me so well.

Later that day I got x-rayed and found out that I had broken my collar bone and my thumb... and that I might be out off training for up to 8 weeks...

More to follow...