Sunday Race Day - 10km

Irchester and Race Day. 10km today - my first 10km race and I am nervous. This is the last in the multi-terrain series run by Just Racing UK. They have done a great job - running the last one in snow, but the weather for this one is just about perfect. No sun, cool, not raining but damn underfoot that will create plenty of mud for the run. Perfect.

The last two 5km races I started at the back of the pack and ended up running through a lot of slower runners - so this time I decided to go closer to the front. Big mistake! A larger turnout this time meant that there were a lot of runners a lot faster than me and I spent the first 20 mins being contently overtaken by faster runners. Its a little demoralising. But I managed to get behind someone running at a decent pace and stay with them for the rest of the first lap.

I must admit - when it came to half way I was wondering if I had made the right choice to step up to the 10km. I was pretty tired, I was well over my 5km pace and I was looking at a 59 min finish - the same as my best training run so far - so I was a little depressed. I picked up some water at the water station and took two sips. The difference this made was amazing. All of a sudden I felt much better and thought that I could increase my pace and low and behold I could.

The second 5km was so much better the first. No stuggling, but lots of heavy breathing and no following other runners. I decided with 2km to go to up my pace considerably and my HR started hitting 185 - my theoretical MAX! Oh well - its a race!

Onwards - I managed to maintain this pace for the whole of the rest of the race - which certainly surprised me - and the second 5km was completed in 23:34 - better than my 5km stand alone time previsouly of over 24 mins.

I finished in 51:47 which is certainly better than I had hoped for - but it also shows that if I run at a slightly higher pace through the first half of the race - I can probably better this time and get under 50 mins.

Great race - great race team - great day. Loved it. Half Marathon in 2 weeks - bring it on!