Lincoln Wellington 5k

Lincoln Wellington Athletic Club host a four race series of 5,000 metres over the summer months at Yarborough Leisure Centre. Having competed earlier in the year at a similar event in Chesterfield, I was pleasantly surprised by both the size of the event and the organisation behind it - and the best bit was that it was super cheap to enter - just a £5, bargain !

The race

I turned up very early again, but this time it was because I had been suffering from DOMS in my hamstring for the preceeding couple of days and wanted to make sure that I spent enough time warming up before the race - besides warm up was on the running track and it was a great running surface. I also met up with John from UK Netrunner, himself looking to break the 25 minute mark for the first time - you can follow Johns blog here :http://runner795.blogspot.com/

We lined up at half past seven and after a short race briefing we were set on our way. The course is made up of a short loop, followed by three larger loops, all run on the cycle track which follows the perimetre of the leisure centre grounds. The pace for the first lap was a bit quicker than I am used to as I found myself running with John ( the netrunner peleton! ) and I was struggling to keep with his faster pace. As we hit the first of the larger laps though I managed to settle down into it and found myself targeting one of the runners about twenty metres ahead of me.

She was still in my sights for most of the second lap, but towards the end , I managed to squeeze past on a corner just before I got lapped by the race leader. For the rest of the lap, I concentrated on not dropping my pace and getting re-taken.

On the final lap, I found the pace hard work, but decided to try and keep going as long as I could. For the final 400m I could hear someone beginning to catch me and it took all I could muster to finish just ahead in a near sprint finish.

23.37 then for the night, and a PB by nearly two minutes at this distance - a good evenings work.