After a successful Dunbartonshire championship I had changed my mind about the West District race as there was an outside chance of a team prize, but when I got to Irvine it turned out that several potential counters wouldn't be taking part. Conditions weren't too bad with occasional light showers although the going was quite heavy in places on account of the rain earlier in the week, so I went with the 9mm spikes again. I tried to get off to a reasonably fast start and once the field had thinned out I was a few seconds behind a pack containing some of my usual rivals. During the first half of the race I was falling slightly further behind, but every now and then somebody would get detached from the pack and I would eventually pass them.
I finished the first lap comfortably inside 12 minutes for approximately 2 miles, which felt like a sustainable pace, and I was still inside 24 after the second lap. On the final lap I was starting to make up some ground, although after one of my rivals dropped out up ahead I apparently lost track of the race as I thought shortly afterwards that I had a good chance of catching the others on the next lap, only to realise on checking my watch that there was just over half a mile to run and there wasn't a next lap. I took advantage of a hill to move up another couple of places, although I was outsprinted shortly afterwards by a fast finisher. I ended up 55th, 12th vet, in 35:26 for 6 miles - average pace 5:43/mile. I was 3rd for Garscube and we finished 6th team, a long way out of the medals, but we were also 3rd Vets' team so there was a prize after all, although I didn't know about this so I didn't hang around for the presentations. Jogged about half a mile round the course afterwards to warm down.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment