The temperature in the morning wasn't much above freezing but the sun was out, so I thought the frozen ground would probably thaw out a bit and it would be safe enough for racing, although I was glad I had given the Dunbartonshire Cross Country Championships a miss. East Kilbride hadn't really warmed up by the start of the race so I had to wear a t-shirt under my club vest.
On account of my recent increase in mileage I was prepared just to treat the race as a fast training session, but my plan for the first part at least was to try to stick to 3:30 per kilometre, and if this seemed to be going well enough, I hoped to sneak in under 35 minutes.
I went through 1K in 3:23 and 2K in 6:46, although this was just on the other side of a footbridge with some hairpin turns so I wondered if the second marker was slightly out, but I was still feeling OK. During the third kilometre my legs started to feel the cold and I began to slow down. I reached the 5K turn in exactly 17:30 and was in 10th place at that point, but I knew I wasn't going to be any faster on the way in, and on the next kilometre I lost 19 seconds so even sub-36 was looking doubtful. After I had dropped to 12th it occurred to me that I was losing time on the kilometres which were slightly uphill, not helped by the frozen surface in some places. I had made up a few seconds when I reached the 7K mark, and then moved up a place when somebody ahead of me pulled out. Approaching the footbridge I realised that the 2nd kilometre had been slightly downhill which accounted for my fast split, so the 9th kilometre would be uphill and I was going to lose a bit more time there. On my way down the footbridge I moved back into 10th and began to gain on three runners ahead of me, but I didn't manage to catch any of them before the end and finished 10th in 35:24. This improved on my time from last year by 50 seconds. I might have done better with more of a rest before the race.
After getting home I went out for a steady run via Cleveden Road and Queen Margaret Drive, mainly to push me above 10 miles for the day, finishing the 4.25-mile route just inside 30 minutes.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
good race stephen. glad to see you're keeping the mileage up too - come spring-summer road racing we'll be winning some team prizes I guarantee! i ran quite well in the muddy field that was dunbartonshire - garscube kicked some ass as a team too, even with Toby in clunky trainers!
Post a Comment