Polaroid Clydebank 10K

The hamstring problem was no worse than it had been before the Helensburgh 10K, but I still hadn't quite got used to the heat by the time of the race and felt quite fatigued. The Clydebank 10K had been designated the club 10K championship, of which I was the current holder. There was however a larger Garscube turnout than the previous week and I had little chance of being among our first three finishers, so the pressure was off with regards to counting for a team prize. I decided just to aim for the usual 3:25/K and see how long I could keep it up for. I wore the Brooks Green Silence as they had worked out OK at Helensburgh.

The course had been revised to avoid Dumbarton Road, so the start and finish had been moved back, and the route through the Business Park had been changed. I reached the first kilometre marker in a reasonable position in the field but definitely feeling like I was putting in more effort than I should have been, not least because the time on my watch was 3:45. This was pretty demoralising, but when I went through 2K in 6:45 without having noticeably sped up, I was quite relieved. By this point I was 4th for Garscube. On the towpath I could feel my pace starting to suffer and had to fight an urge to drop out over the next mile or so, telling myself that if I could just drag myself to the finish I wouldn't have to run at Dumbarton the following Thursday. Once I had got through the Business Park at the start of the second lap, it was just a case of getting it over with. On the canal, where I was sure my pace had dropped outside 6:00/mile, I could tell Marco wasn't far behind me, although he didn't seem to be getting any closer so I shouted back to him not to take his pace from me. He went past shortly afterwards, along with the leading lady.

Heading through the Business Park for the last time, I lost a place to a Maryhill Harrier, and I hadn't seen the 8K marker and thought there was still a fair way to go, but after turning a corner I saw that we were at 9K and managed to pick it up enough to gain back the place and open up a small gap before the end. I finished in 34th place in a pretty poor 36:54, average pace 5:56/mile, with a bloodstained sock from a blister which had developed during the race. The results showed that some people had clearly coped with the heat much better than others, so I would attribute my slow time to that as much as gradual loss of fitness.