Woodhall Spa 10k

Team Newham runs again !

Back in April, both myself and my brother Dave completed the Lincoln 10k in 1.21 - and today we had a mission to beat that in what was going to be Dave's 2nd only 10k.

The weather was perfect as we arrived in the very pleasant town of Woodhall Spa nice and early, but still too late to park at Jubilee Park, and instead be directed to the overflow car park on Green Lane. There were 800 odd other runners and it was very busy before the start. After we had waited 10 minutes for the toilets to be serviced we made our way to the start where we hung around at what we thought was the rear of the field before we were started on our way at 11.05am.

The Woodhall course is a very deceptive uphill for the first mile or so, and we kept a very respectable 9.40m/m pace for the best part of the first half of a mile. When we stopped for our first walk break it soon became apparent that we had started toward the middle of the field as we were passed by numerous runners !  We got going again shortly after and managed to register a 11:xx first mile which out us ahead of our 13.00 minute target pace. Mile 2 still had an incline and we walked a lot more than we did in the first mile, trying to walk briskly so that the average pace didn't slide too much. By the third mile and heading to halfway it was getting very warm and Dave had to strip a layer off to stay cool. This third mile was the slowest so far and at 13.10 was outside of our target pace, so we had to take some steps in the 2nd half of the race, to make sure that the race didn't slide away from us.

Mile 4 was a concerted effort to take shorter walk breaks coupled with shorter run efforts and this improved things with a 12.20 split for that mile. It also helped that by this point we had a target runner which we had agreed would not beat us and we strategically began to make sure that she remained within our sights, meaning that mile 5 came and went in a similar time to the previous mile.

Before we knew it we were in the final stages of the race and as we rounded the corner towards the Jubilee Park finish Dave let rip with a Kenyan-esque sprint finish to win the Newham battle on the day and complete his 2nd 10k in 1.15.30 - a 6 min shiny new PB.

A good days running all round with some stunning countryside thrown in !

Next up for Team Newham is a Super Sprint Triathlon in Birmingham on 21 July !