After a few days of relative inactivity, I felt OK for the club 5 mile race at Milngavie Water Works, if slightly over-tapered. I was one of a small group of three runners that set off at a fast pace. There was no prospect of winning so my goal was second place. We passed the 1-mile marker in 5:15 which seemed comfortable enough despite the strong wind, and I ran at the front for a long time to keep the pace up. The second mile was only slightly slower than the first, but the group had still been inseparable up to that point. The pace suddenly became too difficult to maintain and I dropped back into third as the other two opened up a gap.
I was starting to resign myself to a disappointing third-place finish and the loss of a valuable Summer League point when the front pair separated after about a hundred metres, and I started to make up ground on second place while the race leader moved further ahead. I went into second shortly afterwards and gradually pulled away. Somewhere between three and four miles the gap became comfortable, although I must have dropped slightly outside 6-minute miles by this point. My finishing time was 28:47, over a minute faster than last year. I would probably have run a better time in a less tactical race.
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2 comments:
no chance at winning? give yourself more credit stephen - i could have easily fallen apart. luckily my legs had run in them last night. as we know from training runs, that's not always the case.
Which training runs are those?! Anyway, rest assured if you had somehow run out of steam, taken a wrong turn or been attacked by ducks I would happily have claimed that bottle of wine. ;)
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