How I came last in the Mascot Race

A joke in the Middlesex press box became a surreal experience on Finals Day for NICK FRIEND, who ran - particularly poorly - as Pinky the Panther. Headbutted by an eagle, humiliated by a giraffe and carrying a concussion, he survived to tell the tale

Well, everybody hurts sometimes / Everybody cries / Everybody hurts, sometimes – R.E.M. (1992)

My legs: they hurt. My feet: they hurt. My head: it hurts. Everything hurts.

My eyes: they are still stinging with the sweat of this godforsaken outfit's prior volunteers, leaking out of the sides of the hardhat shoehorned into the upper skull.

My dignity: it hurts. The particular moment where the perspiration had become so all-consuming that I – in the guise of Pinky the Panther – could no longer access the friction required to navigate some quite basic inflatables haunts my dreams: real death-of-Mufasa vibes, slipping to some of the most agonising humiliation imaginable as a giraffe, only seconds earlier coiled in a motionless heap, bombed past in the battle to avoid the Mascot Race wooden spoon and, in the T20 Blast's 20th year, infamy.

But I'll take infamy. In the words of Lao Tzu, the ancient philosopher: "To lead people, walk behind them." That much was no trouble at all. At one point, one of the guides even felt it necessary to suggest I "run forwards". I was not, it is safe to say, a raging success.

We are mid-heatwave, and I am writing while under the influence of paracetamol and freeze spray. I have a self-diagnosed side strain and an ego bruised beyond repair. The water bottle tied to my chest, with a tube through to my face, burst when I fell for the finish line.

On the long walk back to Edgbaston's indoor school – a cruel, endless parade of wounded exhaustion – one supporter requested a photograph with Middlesex's only Finals Day involvement since Tyron Henderson; another eagle-eyed spectator queued up merely to point out that I'd come "dead last". He dealt in facts rather than sympathy, but he was not wrong.

For an hour, I had wilted like an unloved flower, melted like chocolate in a warm pocket, leaked like a faulty tap. It was, one assumes, like running into a volcano wrapped in a duvet. Without irony – at the hottest point on one of the hottest days – I can safely call this, in a costume not designed for track-and-field, the hardest piece of physical exertion of my life.

All for this, to be able to call myself a veteran of the Mascot Race. I consider myself at times to be a self-respecting, semi-serious journalist, but I am also – above all else – a child of the Blast and the slapstick absurdity that comes with breaking briefly from English cricket's domestic showpiece to allow 24 fur-coated adults their 10 minutes' carnage.

Before last year's Finals Day, I wrote my then-magnum opus, where a collection of former racers laid bare the boiling truths of cricket's annual tie-up with Takeshi's Castle. One lap around Edgbaston: once through the ball-pit, once under the cargo netting, once around the inflatable ball, once through the giant stumps, once over the bat. And the majority said this: be careful what you wish for.

"I hold a crushing fear for performing in front of large audiences, and there is perhaps nothing on this planet that could scare me more than being unmasked in front of 22,000 people in the process of re-tearing a troublesome hamstring"

"And then a sprint to the finish," came an optimistic pre-race directive, delivered with a Welsh twang by an ECB exec in the indoor centre, repurposed on this day as a holding zone for these willing sufferers in fancy dress.

This was followed by a walk to the groundsman's enclosure, where we were stowed until Lancashire had beaten Yorkshire, before the quarter-mile showdown between such giants as Yorkshire's viking, Somerset's wyvern and Worcestershire's crocodile could begin, amid unfounded rumours of a shorter course to deal with the temperature. Trashtalk – apparently a regular staple among competitors – was mostly absent, such was the sweltering heat.

To clarify, I never wanted to do this, but I wanted to have done it. There is a subtle difference: a bit like skydiving, where ticking it off the bucket list is far more attractive a proposition than falling from a plane.

Whether there has been a slower, sadder lap than this, though, is uncertain, so this also comes as an apology to the Middlesex faithful, whose cat did not run fast, in fact for large parts appearing only to move in spite of itself. One tweeter asserted that I'd "completely let the club down". The counter-argument, of course, is that this was a fine piece of method acting, guiding the Blast's worst team to rock-bottom.

But I cannot lie, I performed worse – and more eventfully – than even my most pessimistic forecast. After only a fortnight's preparation, however, I come bearing excuses: Pinky's archaic costume needs renovating – for one, his ear didn't survive the ball-pit, the course's answer to Becher's Brook. More debilitating, though, was the head, which fell off six times and absolutely refused to remain in place. I had brought a penny farthing to a grand prix, and a cyclist who couldn't ride it.

To cushion against the hardhat, I positioned a Norwich City scarf – I don't support Norwich City – at the back of my head along with a towel, borrowed from my brother. Within seconds, they had burrowed round to my brow, disabling my already restricted line of vision. Having shed all excess luggage in a quite kneejerk loss of composure, the towel spent much of the second semi-final sat by the deep midwicket fence.

My plan to be last into the ball-pit to prevent ambush failed on multiple counts: the first being entry itself, a graceless attempt at a Fosbury Flop which took three or four tries to execute, the second coming in the form of one of Essex's comms department, who was dressed as an eagle and landed on my face, long-since separated by now from Pinky's head. We reunited as an ungainly struggle ensued to roll out of the pen, the GoPro footage of which is truly harrowing, featuring a panicked repetitive kick of the right leg somewhere between a footballer denoting mock-injury and a fish panicked out of water.

Almost all of the race is a blur, but that memory is particularly vivid: down the Hollies Strait, clinging to the whiskers of my temporary alter ego. All I could hear was the laughter of the crowd, isolated by my brain from the other noise, and the likely correct assumption that it related to what had come before.

I hold a crushing fear for performing in front of large audiences, and there is perhaps nothing on this planet that could scare me more than being unmasked in front of 22,000 people in the process of re-tearing a troublesome hamstring. Thankfully, that particular nightmare didn't come to pass.

Adrenalin, though, is a great drug – so much so that I opted to crawl through the giant stumps, essentially bouncy castle meets parthenon, an act committed for no justifiable reason on what was effectively an inflatable footpath. The subsequent wriggle under the netting was sufficiently problematic that I performed an unwitting U-turn and emerged back at the entrance, before being ushered through by a steward no doubt under orders to get this finished before nightfall.

I have since learned that, by now, the race was over as a contest – Gloucestershire's gorilla victorious for the third time in five seasons. Well done, mate. Enjoy the money. I hope it makes you happy.

But the battle at the other end of the field was merely hotting up: Lanky, the competition's cult figure and inaugural champion in 2004, had flown out of the traps but was by this juncture struggling and regretting his life choices. He had become entangled, creating a bottleneck of stragglers, before loosening himself but collapsing to his haunches as he passed the giant ball.

I was fully aware that contestants are supposed to do a lap of the ball, but I was no longer concerned by the playing conditions, too dizzy in any case for that to make much of a difference. Instead, I lumbered past it, caught up with the giraffe and considered a gesture of sportsmanship: the chance to steal the show by finishing arm-in-arm – a Derek Redmond moment (or Nigel Desmond, as I erroneously put it to Test Match Special two hours later), if you will. I opted against that, though, seeing the chance to beat someone, anyone... even a 10-foot giraffe.

Karma has its way, though. And as I abandoned him and gave my last remnants of energy to clambering over a giant bat no taller than an office chair, he re-emerged, second-winded, and leapt over at the first attempt in a snippet captured by Sky Sports that summed up the whole struggle in a single, humiliating frame. I remained: a picture of forlorn confusion, fighting against my own sweat.

That was a fitting farce on which to conclude, given this all began with a joke in the Lord's press box – a 'wouldn't it be funny if I did this?' moment that became a text message from Middlesex's man in charge of such matters. He agreed: it would be funny, and I should do it. Two Tuesdays ago, I was granted full access to the Lord's outfield and pavilion gym, and the wheels were set in motion.

There was another practice day two afternoons out, believe it or not, this time in a local park, with costume alterations attempted but ultimately canned, including one that would have seen my father's hockey pads – unused since the 1980s – stuffed onto the collarbone to prop up Pinky's head. This almost choked me, so the idea was scrapped. So, too, was the thought to tie a cycling helmet to the hardhat.

All that for the sake of five surreal minutes. To flip a famous proverb, don't cry because it happened; smile because it's over. Pinky is back in his holdall until next summer, minus an ear.