No, not the Birchwood in my home city of Lincoln, but the Birchwood shopping centre over the other side of the country in Warrington !
Suffice to say then, it was a very early alarm call on Sunday morning and I think I did well to manage to only hit the snooze button three times. Once I had caught up on Match Of The Day, had a coffee and eaten some raceday porridge, it was time to get in the car and make my way over to Lancashire in a journey that would surprisingly only take two hours and ten minutes.
I arrived, again, very early and spent at least half an hour just sitting in the car playing with my phone, before it was time to get out, find a toilet (it was stand ups - bliss !) and have a bit of a stretch and go through my warm up routine. There was an organised warm up, but as soon as the guy started doing lunges that was enough for me and I just did my own thing.
I lined up for the race about halfway down the pack of about 650 runners, and met Peter & Tristan, two other Netrunners. We didn't get too much time to chat before we were set off.
My plan pre race was to have a crack at going under 50 minutes for a 10k race for the first time. I knew that on my not very accurate Garmin this would mean keeping my pace at an even 13 or above which would lead to 5 minute kilometres ( it was only two years ago that I was in Manchester aiming for 6 minute kilometres to go under the hour !).
For the first kilometre, I averaged about 13.2 or so and this took me through the first kilometre marker at just under five minutes and from there the challenge was set - get to each kilometre marker within 5 minutes and it would be mine !
By the time we left the retail/office park, and had passed the second kilometre, I was still on time, but felt like I was working incredibly hard - still, it wasn't an uncomfortable pace, and I felt during that third kilometre that I was settling down. At this point I was still overtaking people, and making a conscious effort not to fall into the pace of any runners in front of me and just concentrated on my own pace.
I managed to get to 5km in around 24.45 (looking forward to my 5k race next week!), stopped briefly at the water station to pour some water over my head, and then continued on my way.
I tried to run an intelligent race and looked ahead for the most efficient line as the country roads were winding at this point, which I think I managed. The second half of the race was mostly quiet lanes, there were some fly overs, and we even had to negotiate a horsebox road block !
All the time, the kilometre markers were coming and going until the point that I reached the last kilometre marker at around 44.50 - which meant that some effort over the last 1000 metres would see me reach my sub 50 goal - in all honestly, that was the point where I knew I'd done it, but took the last kilometre seriously and entered a sprint finish to cross the line in 49.36, a new personal best by nearly three minutes, and second place in the club handicap.
I collected my very smart race towel, and went and met up with other netrunners, and together we applauded our club mates as they crossed the line. A top, top day !
This was part one of Sundays mission, and after a quick hop over to Bolton in the car, I unpacked the bike and rode the Sheep House Lane climb of Ironman UK which was an aim of mine to complete in 2011.
Mmmm makes a special trip to test the Ironman UK course....what's he up to ???
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