Can you best Martyn Brunt’s excuses for performing badly?
Nothing seems to stop our man Brunty from racing – but if his performance is below par, know he’ll have a good excuse.
What’s the best excuse you have ever made for performing badly in a race? I’m not talking about those deliberately vague ones we all trot out at short notice when we’ve had a shocker like “I’ve had a virus” or “I’m still struggling with my injury (the existence of which I haven’t mentioned before until this precise moment)”, I mean those genuine ones which have to be true because they sound made up.
I’ve had a few over the years, the most memorable being that I got accidentally drunk on free wine given to me by six-time Ironman world champion Dave Scott, and ended up throwing up both before and during a 10k race I was doing the following morning.
On another occasion, I skinned my toe on an underwater rock at the start of a swim, which wasn’t a particular problem until I was on the bike and had a sneaky pee down my leg while freewheeling, and the scream I bellowed as the wee hit my toe could be heard in Brazil. When it came to the run my foot was stinging so much I practically had to hop.
This has been on my mind because in the past few weeks this has happened to me twice (performing badly, not the weeing) due to what I’d call “bad luck” but what the medical profession call “misadventure” and my friends call “being a t*t”.
The first was when I took a tumble in the ‘safety’ of my own home. Unfortunately the kitchen sink was between my head and the floor and I knocked myself unconscious on it. Six stitches and 12 hours in A&E later I was allowed home with dire warnings from the doctor not to go swimming, cycling or running because I had concussion, and also risked getting an infection in the wound.
With these words ringing in my ears, I promptly went swimming, and a couple of days later rolled up to my first XC race of the winter. I was dimly aware of a spot having appeared on my eyebrow which looked a bit red but beyond castigating myself for getting acne at my age, I took no notice.
My subsequent run was a complete shambles, I was sweating like a glassblower’s backside from the word go and my face was so red I looked like I was having some kind of allergic reaction.
I finished in a genuinely atrocious time but it was the next morning when I awoke with a face so swollen I couldn’t see out of my right eye that I realised why I’d struggled so badly, I had indeed picked up an infection and was subsequently given antibiotics and a ‘talking to’ from the GP.
My second excuse for being rubbish came just a few days later when, having obviously listened to every word the doctor said, I ran in another local XC race and once again ran so ponderously I looked like the slow-motion title sequence from Baywatch.
Unlike the infection though, the reason for this shambles was well known by me, and indeed predicted, because the night before the run I’d been to see Peter Hook and the Light in concert and had ended up dancing about to New Order songs all night like an 18-year-old, except on 57-year-old legs.
Like all good triathletes, I’d cycled to the gig and even on the ride home I knew I was in trouble because I couldn’t bend my ankles as I pedalled. This was nothing compared to the next morning though, the throbbing in my achilles tendons actually woke me up and my calf muscles were so solid I could crack nuts on them.
Fearful of the reaction I’d get if I withdrew from the run citing Blue Monday as an excuse, I went and ran anyway. I received a lot of amused feedback from spectators on my evidently straight-legged Frankenstein running style and again finished so far down the field you’d get RSI in your thumb scrolling down the results to find me. But, as the saying goes, there’s nothing I regret.
Do you have any excuses for poor performance that match these? If so let’s hear them via the Editor ([email protected]) or 220 Facebook page, and I’ll share some of my favourites next month.
Martyn Brunt
220's back-page columnist 
