I sign up for Cobblers Creek and decide to continue my tradition of putting stupid names on my race bib and enter as ‘Assnugget’ and it’s only after I’ve pressed ‘enter’ I think Cock Gobbler would have been more appropriate because… Cobblers Creek and all that. Or maybe I could have gone with Gock Cobbler and it would have been even funnier. Either way, it doesn’t fucking matter because I get there and there’s fuck all name on my bib and straight away I’ve got the sads. No Ass Nuggets or Gock Cobbles for me today.
I’ve signed up for the 16km ‘medium’ course which is actually 54kms if you include the walk to and from the car park and fuck that was a long way to walk. One of the vollies tries to assure me it will at least be downhill on the way back so that was something to look forward to.
I get there pretty early, and fuck about so much I still manage to miss the chance to do a last minute emergency wee before take off and spend the next two hours trying to decide if I should duck off into the bushes mid-race. I don’t, and it’s a bit like when you’re busting in the middle of the night and when you finally do go you wonder why you didn’t just go earlier and save all that bladder busting discomfort.
Mostly I run out of time because every single person wants to talk to me about navigational issues and course cutting and disqualifications and as the old joke goes, fuck one lousy goat. If you don’t know it, you really should. It’s more than just a pretty great joke, it’s a life lesson.
The start is in groups with the first group for the fast runners and the slow runners and fuck knows who started in the next group, because I don’t like being medium or moderate or mediocre so I go in the first group and figure I can call myself slow, although based on later seeing I finished 77 out of 146 I’m mathematically the literal fucking definition of mid-pack mediocre.
Despite the lack of pre-race urination, I’m pretty happy when we do take off because fucking mosquitoes. Apparently they breed ’em big and angry out this way because they are biting me on my fucking face and I’m well over it and happy to be moving. Away from them.
We’ve been warned the course might be a bit slippery and it’s not long before we hit a section that’s two steps forward, one slip back. As if this running lark isn’t hard enough without it being a bit slip and slide. I’m also not overly delighted my sexy new Nikes are getting mud all over them and am thankful when we’re back on terra firma quickly enough.
I spend most of the race leap frogging with the same handful of runners, one of whom I shall call (Snot)RocketMan because how much fucking snot can you even have up there mate? My wog-honker is fucking massive and even I don’t have that sort of capacity! I know we’ve all got different ideas about what is and isn’t cool, but during a pandemic shooting off your boogers when people are running next to you is fucked up, and during not a pandemic if anyone can even remember that, shooting off your boogers when people are running next to you is fucked up.
I consider saying something but it’s an uphill bit and he’s pulled away and fucked if I’m gonna try catch him just to say ease up on spraying that schnoz spunk all over the place mate. You can imagine my surprise then when I come around a corner and find him trail-side doing up his shoelaces and in the politest, least cunty way I can manage, I say “I don’t suppose you’d mind not doing your snot rockets when people are next to you?”. I feel like it’s gone pretty well until he catches me later and asks if I work with a certain company who happen to be one of my biggest clients and oh fuck. Client. Ex-client. Whatever. And yes, I know you’re probably surprised that I’m not just a full time pro-blogger-influencer-WAG-OnlyFans-contestant on The Bachelorette these days, and trust me, when I say I’m as surprised as you are that this hasn’t happened for me yet.
I pass Lachy the photographer who is stationed at the creek and he tells me he’s waiting for someone to fall in, and while I want to tell him he’s an asshole I don’t because it’s totally fair enough and I’d be doing exactly the same thing. But that’s because I’m an asshole.
I pass another photographer and I’m way too fucked to attempt a jump shot already so just do this sort of half-arsed-half-jump and he tells me I look ‘dainty’ and mate, are you on fucking drugs? There’s lots of words you could use to describe me but not in my wildest dreams is ‘dainty’ one of them.
For obvious reasons, (if you how you know), I panic every time I get to a course turn, because I’m pretty sure Cobbler Creek Conservation park is actually only about two square kilometres so there’s lots of twists and turns to make up the course distance within the park and looking for the short/medium/long course arrows is basically a full time job and involves more reading than is required to get through both of my books combined and after some of my recent comments on the subject the last thing I want to do is take a wrong turn. I’m running with a bunch of people who I assume are also medium course runners when I see them pass an arrow and I zip it. I sort of half heartedly yell out ‘medium course right’ but I’m also not overly confident it is so other than that not. a fucking. word. I just take the turn that may or may not have been the wrong one, and hope like fuck I didn’t just short the course because, well, if you know you know. (For the record, the official race GPS data says the course is 15.77km and my data shows 15.28kms so… fuck. Maybe I did short the course somewhere? Sigh. (NOTE: I checked a friend’s GPS who clocked 15.29kms so maybe not, but will triple check and update accordingly.)
After swapping places with another runner a few times, I come up behind him as we’re closing in on the finish and he steps off to let me pass which I think is quite lovely of him and then he says “gravity is gonna help you more than me going down here” which is slightly less lovely and fuck. you. But not really, because it’s also 100% true. And off I go, letting the combination of gravity and my fat guts do their thing. Winner winner pizza dinner. And doughnuts. And energy drink. And cookies. Mmmmm…. cookies. Because you can’t make friends with salad. And these days I’ll take whatever friends I can get. If that’s cookies, then so be it.
Approaching the last few kms as I’m huffing and puffing my way up what I’m really hoping is the last hill, a kid who must have been all of about 14 comes up behind me and I tell him how well he’s doing. I swear to god he hasn’t even broken a sweat whereas I look like I’ve been swimming in the fucking creek. I ask him what course he’s doing hoping he’s maybe doing the ten, but nope, he explains he’s doing the 16 even though he wanted to do the 25. I ask if it’s because kids aren’t allowed to do the long course and he says no it’s because he ran a PB of 22mins at parkrun the day before then he looks and me and asks “Do you know what parkrun is?” and fuck off kid, I was probably running parkrun before you were born and oh, wait, that’s probably his point. Asshole.
I’m pretty happy when the last 2kms is mostly downhill to the finish line, not including the extra kms back to the carpark, and come blasting down. With about 300m to go I spot a guy just up ahead and I fucking hate wankers who put a last minute sprint on to pip someone at the post so do that and fuck it’s really quite satisfying. Makes sense why some people do it.
At the finish line someone says something to me and I say “you know that’s gonna make it in to my blog now, right?” and sorry, but I have no fucking idea what that even was now. So it didn’t.
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