Did Not Start by George Mahood

Author:George Mahood [Mahood, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-05T20:00:00+00:00

As we were running along an especially boggy and waterlogged stretch of bridleway near East Prawle, I heard another scream from Rachel behind me. I turned, expecting to see her lying on the floor again, but instead she was crouched next to a large muddy puddle in a tractor rut.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘I was trying to have a drink and I dropped the valve for my hydration pack into there.’

‘In that deep puddle? Are you serious?’

‘Er... yes.’

‘Of all the places you could have dropped it.’

‘To be fair, most of the ground has looked like this.’

‘That's true.’

Rachel had already dipped her hand into the puddle, forgetting to remove her glove, and failing to find the valve. She was using her other hand to squeeze the end of the water tube to stop it emptying the contents everywhere. I didn't have any gloves to get wet, so plunged both my hands into the icy water and began to rummage around in the mud at the bottom.

Several runners stepped around us but didn't seem in the least bit curious by the sight of us squatting next to a puddle, me with my arms submerged to the elbow in the brown water.

‘Am I going to have to run the rest of the race holding this tube?’ said Rachel.

‘Got it!’ I said after about 30 seconds, removing the mud-soaked valve from the puddle.

‘Thank you! It's a good job it doesn't work. I'm not sure I would want to suck water through that.’

By this point, we had been joined by runners from the half marathon and the 10k, as our route merged with theirs. They had started a couple of hours after us and it made a pleasant change to be surrounded by other people for a while. Just as we were relishing the company of others, they all turned off at the ONE MILE TO GO sign and it went eerily quiet once again. It would be a very long time before we saw that sign again.

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