Last day of the athletics program

Yesterday saw us pick up another good medal haul on the final day of the athletics program; as always checkout the Guernsey Athletics blog for the full run down of results and race video’s. From a personal perspective I retained the 1500m in a time 3minutes 49 seconds, a time I was reasonably happy with being that I ran from the front and it was also a bit on the windy side. My performance didn’t quite match Ingy’s commentary however! As coming down the home straight he announced ‘ and this is what sub 4minute miling speed looks like’. Ingy is Paul Ingrouille a local stalwart of Guernsey Athletics who was invited to come out to help the Aland organising by providing some English speaking commentary alongside his Swedish counterparts. Whilst I wasn’t necessarily looking to run sub 4min mile pace (which would have been 3.43/3.44 pace for 1500m I was at the very least hoping to run inside the games record of 3.51, which I set at the last games in Rhodes. This was my first 1500 race of the season (excluding Thursday’s heats) but I was still aiming to run a time somewhere between 3.45 – 3.50 so it was a case of job done I guess.

After the race I got pounced upon for a few interviews, which admittedly I enjoy doing. However, when one of the interviews from one of our local radio stations described my race back to me before then asking if I was pleased to win I couldn’t resist in saying, deadpan… ‘No it was awful’ and then leaving an uncomfortable silence for effect J it got a laugh off the camera man at least!

Feeling a little tired this morning I must admit, as a team the athletics crowd all had a meal together at the hotel last night before heading out for a few social drinks. At the meal we had presented our usual games ritual of ‘special’ awards… basically everyone in the team gets an ironic award for an incident or comment that they did or said during the week. Dale Garland got the ‘I’m still Jenny from the block award!’ whilst Martine Scholes got most likely to be sponsored by a foot care company award – after being called Martine Scholls all week by the stadium announcers, Steve Dawes also picked up a similar style award after being referred to as Stephan Daves all week only for the announcer last night when presenting his half marathon medal to refer to him as Stephen Davis. Subsequently he also got the award for the best snooker player in the team!

Also just before I sign off, Tom Druce just told us about his night last night… I will spare you any long stories but the culmination of his night, whilst walking a young lady back to her hotel, involved him stumbling and falling in the harbour, losing his mobile in the process!

That’s likely to be it from me in terms of Island Games posts, next weekend I have the National Champs & World Trials in Birmingham. In the meantime I’m looking forward to see my wife and son after a week apart.

That’s all from Aland.

Tack tack.

Lee