And you've won.......a Xmas Pudding !

Heanor 10k - 56.54

There it is to the right.... a bloody great big Xmas pudding, the replacement today for either an event t-shirt or indeed a medal - and when I'm tucking into it on Xmas day, I'll think back to a windy day in November !

Like I've pointed out in previous threads, the end of this year is all about building up that 10k base going into the New Year and to assist with this I'd entered three 10k events between 21st November and 19th December.

First up then, the Matthew Walker Heanor Xmas pudding 10k , or the Heanor 10k as I think it is best that we call it. The object today was to get round in under an hour, as I had been suffering with a stiff calf after my two previous training runs, and rightly I was a little cautious about pushing things too much. To combat the calf, I wore my 2XU calf supports, and to make sure I wasn't laughed at, I disguised this fact by wearing running tights. It was a good job that I had so many layers of clothes on in the end to be honest, because it was bloody cold today, not just cold , but really through to the bones nasty cold - and I felt for the supporters, because us runners just need a few minutes of a race to warm up, the supporters have to wait around in it for upto an hour and a half - kudos to them !!

No race timing chips today folks, it was down to me and the measurements of the old Garmin 50 ! At almost bang on the advertised start time of 10.30am, an airhorn sounded and we crossed the rather shaky spray painted start line and we were off on our adventure.....

The first couple of kilometres take you around a loop of the industrial estate, and you pass the Matthew Walker factory twice, (cheers for the pudding!), before heading out of Heanor, via a bloody great hill, and into the countryside. First two kilometres were ticked off rather conservatively at just under the hour pace, and then during the third kilometre, and after the bloody great hill had been climbed, I started to feel a little more comfortable, and tried to keep pace with a couple of blokes in front who I estimated were running at a pace that would bring me in under my PB. I tracked these two at a safe non stalky distance up the ups, and down the downs, and at 5km was there or there abouts for a good time. It then became a case of trying to knock off each kilometre as it came, and keeping pace with my pacemakers. Between 5 and 7km's, I think I ran the most fluent and fastest couple of kilometres that I ever had, and as a result at 7km I was well ahead of PB pace and thought I was on for sub 55 - but as things sometimes do, the wheels began to wobble a little bit, my two pacemakers started to edge away bit by bit, and between kilometres 8 and 9, I struggled.

At 9km, I thought - Right, just one kilometre left - ramp it up, and I did, I ran as hard as I could, I ran up what I thought was the last hill, only to see that there was another even bigger hill right before the finish- and that was that, a real killer , just three hundred metres from the line - a direct parody of the course in Sheffield, and because of this I crossed the line, completely mullered by the course, less than 20 seconds outside of my personal best time !

I don't feel gutted, sad or disappointed, because that was the best race I have ever run, in terms of how I paced it and how I felt, and I know that if I can stay healthy over the next few weeks then the PB will fall without a doubt in either Sheffield on Dec 5th, or Bolsover on December 19th.