Car trouble

Well… my 2009 racing season has got off to a particularly bad start. Regular readers of this blog will know I was done to run the Gloucester 50k this weekend. I had a race entry sorted, a hotel booked and just needed to drive over. Unfortunately this last step proved the problem. I left Cambridge on Saturday around 4.45pm, it was a bit late but I still had plenty of time to get over to Gloucester but I didn’t make it very far out of Cambridge; in fact I only made it as far as Trumpington High Street before my car developed a fault. At the minute I’m driving an Alfa Romeo 156 selespeed which was a kind gift from my Dad after he upgraded to a Spyder. The car is great but it has a semi-automatic gear system which means all the gears are controlled by an onboard electronic control unit (ECU) even if you use the gearstick. Unfortunately mine has developed some kind of fault and keeps getting stuck in gear it’s done this a few times recently but has always corrected itself. It’s due an MOT next month so I was waiting on that to check the problem out. However, on Trumpington high street it got stuck in neutral and wouldn’t move, leaving me no option but to switch on the hazard lights.

I knew I was in trouble when an old lady who looked about 80 came over and asked if I needed help pushing the car to the side. I thanked her and told her I’d be OK and got the car to the side of the road and called the RAC. They were pretty good and came an hour and a half or so later. Unfortunately the prognosis for the car is not great. The chap said the only thing we could try was unhooking the ECU from the battery and then disconnecting the battery, apparently losing power resets said ECU and so should remove any faults. At first this seemed to work and I even still had time to make it to Gloucester. Unfortunately I had only got as far as the petrol station a hundred yards down the road when it got stuck in neutral again. The RAC man (who had followed me just in case) sorted it again but advised that I had probably better go home. There didn’t seem any point in risking getting stuck half way to Gloucester and so I reluctantly agreed and set off for home. To his credit the RAC man followed me all the way back. Three or four times the same problem reoccurred but this time it got stuck in first or second so I was able to keep going and each time the problem fixed itself after a short while. However, it seems likely there is some form of potentially quite serious fault with the car and I didn’t think I should drive it until I’ve had it checked out. Apparently there is an Alfa specialist in Sawston which is good although how I’m going to get the car out there is another problem altogether.

Anyway, after all this excitement it was too late to hop on the train to Gloucester and too late to grab a hire car. I thought about trying to get a hire car or train very early the next morning and driving over for the race but in the end I thought better of it. I’ve driven long distances to race events on the day in the past. For the Great North Swim I even got up at 4am drove up the lake district, did the mile swim and then drove home again, however I felt almost dangerously tired all the way there and I’ve never performed at my best when I’ve done an early start. So, very reluctantly I realised I was going to have to pull out of the race and so phoned the race organizers and hotel (who said it was too a late to get my money back).

To cheer myself up I decided to make myself the bean curry I’d been waiting to try out from the recipe in my vegetarian cook book and it actually turned out quite well. However, I was left in a bit of a quandary. I’d told everyone at work I would be running 30 miles and I’d carbo loaded and reduced my training as if I was going to do so. I figured I’d better go for a long run the next day so the work was not wasted.

I awoke on the Sunday at 8am to the sound of rain against my window. “Just great” I thought “I can get wet as well as knackered”. I decided to go back to bed for an hour and then see what the weather was doing. At 9.45 it was still raining but I decided it wasn’t too bad and I did have a waterproof so I thought I’d go anyway and see how far I got. I’d run 24 miles round Cambridge two weeks before so I figured I could try and do that again at least.

Things actually went quite well I did the 24 mile route but on the river section I went all the way up to Waterbeach rather than turn round at the lock. I ran a little way around Waterbeach and then headed back. A detour back through town and a lap of the park opposite the house gave me a grand total of 30.25 miles on my GPS system. I had done it. It took me longer than the last time I ran 30 miles (and that time it was cross country) but this time, as it wasn’t a proper race there were no gels or bananas or biscuits as I went round as I only had water with me. On the plus side I was home in time to get the weeks shopping in and go out for a meal with my friends and see Jimmy Carr at the Corn exchange which was really good.


Negative

I missed the race which I had been looking forward to.
I lost the race entry and the hotel fees.
I missed out on the “official” start of my quest to do a marathon a month in 2009.
There is still a potentially serious (and expensive) problem with the car.
Running long distance the day after a bean curry is not the best idea in the world.

Positive

I still ran 30 miles at the weekend so technically am still on track.
I got the car home without too many problems and didn’t need a tow from Gloucester (which would have been very expensive)
I still got to see Jimmy Carr
Using no Gels or sports drinks means I burnt off more calories overall


This is a screen grab from my training software that came with my T6C watch. I used GPS to ensure I really did 30 miles (see below for proof).