Lincoln 10k race report

Ah... the Lincoln 10k, my local race , my favourite 10k and where the journey began 4 years ago. Today I was joined by my brother Dave and together we aimed to get around in under 1hr 30 mins ! It would be Daves first race of any kind I think since our swim instructor in the mid 80's decided to let us race over 10m in City school's pool !

As always for the 10k the weather was great and we even had that strange orange orb in the sky that we see so little of !

We made good time getting down to the start area and had time for some stretching and a little bit of a jog up to the start pens on Riseholme Road - we went to the 60+ box and had a good view of the 5000 or so runners that seemed to stretching out for a miles in front of us. At 11.03 were were off........ on a 400m walk and eventually we crossed the start line for the actual start of the race !

The plan to get round in target time was to run/walk at 14 minute miles pace and adopt the Bolton Ironman cone counting strategy that served me so well last year with trees and lamp posts replacing cones.
For the first third of a mile we managed to amble along quite well and overtook a few people who had already started to walk until we got around the first roundabout and started the walk part of our strategy. We then started to pick out which trees we would start running again from and then from the distance which landmarks would mark the start of the walking stretch. First mile ticked off in 11 mins and Dave still looking fresh, so we repeated for the 2nd and third miles which took us to the water station at the halfway point in 38/39 minutes !

The second half of the race saw us tiring and taking longer walking breaks but we kept on pushing on and tried to keep some target runners in our sights to keep moving forward. It was bliss passing the 9km marker and I offered Dave the opportunity to do a third lap to which he politely declined !

A quick rounding of the Cathedral and a run across the cobbles of Castle square meant a sprint finish through the Castle Gates and across the line in 1.21.05 - 4314th and 4315th on the day with Dave beating me alphabetically to claim the family bragging rights !

A quality days running and a super debut from our kid :-)