Dunky Wright 5K

I felt quite heavy on the morning of this race and wondered if two days off (or three excluding football on Wednesday) was slightly too much, but I decided to stick to my plan of trying to run 3:15 per kilometre, which I didn't expect to maintain for very long, but my goal was to finish inside 17 minutes and in any case there was almost no danger of failing to beat last year's time of 17:35. I made it to the 1K mark in exactly 3:15, and on the second lap of the business park the leaders were still in sight although my time at 2K was 6:37. I was making up a few places on the fast starters, although my pace was still slipping - 10:05 or so at the 3K mark. After we turned onto the canal towpath, with the footsteps behind me getting closer, the next kilometre was even more of a struggle and I had to fight for air coming up to the 4K mark. I went through it in something like 13:35 which gave me an excellent chance of beating 17 minutes. In the home stretch I didn't have much left for any kind of kick but crossed the line in 23rd place in 16:58, one second faster than my time from 2004. My PB of 16:06 was set in this race in 2003 and it's encouraging to be back in the same minute. (I notice the results from 2002 have me as DNF but that certainly didn't happen.) My time works out at 5:27 per mile. Might have done slightly better if I hadn't set out quite so fast.

After the race I jogged round most of the course again with Lindsay for a warm-down.