First race of 2011 today and it was slightly longer than my regular ones coming in at 12km, or 7.46 miles in old money.
The plan today was to treat this run out as just another training run, aim to run around 10min/mile pacing and use the time as part of my weekly Don Fink Ironman training plan, which I am finally working to.
I found out about this race through UKnetrunner , which is an online running club which I joined in December and entered it was one of the club's handicap events. The race was also being held in Stratford Upon Avon which is a great place to visit too.
The race HQ was at the NFU mutual offices on Tiddington Lane and we soon found ourselves at registration to pick up our race numbers and timing chips. I thought that this process would be long winded, but to the credit to the guys at Stratford AC, they had everything sorted and it was a quick in and out job. This meant that there was bags of time left before the start, so a few trots up and down to warm up, and a walk back to the car followed by strategically timed portaloo stops was the order of the morning before we made our way up a narrow lane for the start.
The course was a basic anti-clockwise loop, on country roads and country lanes, undulating with one advertised challenging climb. Dead on 11 o clock then, we were off !
Continuing with my recent strategy and remembering that I was supposed to be taking it easy in any case, I ran the first couple of kilometres in 11.30 minutes, I was also being overtaken a lot as the field started to take shape. This didn't bother me too much as all I was concentrating on was my pace and knew things would pick up later in the race. The countryside that we were going through was fantastic and this first part of the race was very pleasant. By the third kilometre though I'd made my mind up that this was going to be more than a training run and started to lift the pace a little. The course began to look familiar at around this time as it dawned on me that this run was following the same course that was used for the Warwickshire Triathlon in 2009. We then saw the 'challenging hill' to our right which looked steep and long, but remembering it from the Triathlon, I knew that it looked far worse than it actually was and this was the case thankfully.
We got to halfway in just under 35 minutes, but this was in part due to the undulating first half of the course. What followed was glorious flatness which meant that the kilometre times started to get better and better ! At 10km, I ran through at just under 57mins which was not far off my previous personal best ! I wanted to go faster over the last two kilometres, but was stiffening up and found it difficult going. I found some improvement in the last 400m, and then in the last 50m, got involved in a sprint finish over the line, which I think I edged, but not totally sure !! I came home in just under 1.08 which was far better than I thought I'd manage at the start of the day.
In all then, delighted with the run, really enjoyed the surroundings on a windy day, and came back with a new personal best (over a new distance !!).
Next week its the re-arranged Bolsover 10k, and today has renewed the enthusiasm !
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