Brigg Poppy Run 10k

Today was a return to 10k running, and my first standalone 10k of the year following my previous adventures with Team Newham over the summer.

I certainly picked a right old windy day for it too - with 21mph winds during the day leading up to the gale force winds expected overnight.

I rocked up at Brigg early enough to sit in my car for 20 mins, just so I could benefit from the 2 hours free parking, before making my way to registration to collect my race number of 398 for the day. There was a military challenge taking place at the same time where participants carried a heavy rucksack and wore boots throughout their 10k challenge. They were set off at 10.45am and it allowed me a further 15mins to warm up and estimate my place in the pack - there was no chip timing so I wanted to get as close to the front as possible.

There was a brief countdown before we were set off at 11.00 ! For the first mile I wanted to run a pace close to my usual parkrun first mile one, but as soon as we turned right out of the car park, it was apparent that the first half of the race would be run into a strong headwind - indeed I had to pull my visor down as far as I could so that it didn't blow off ! the first mile was hard work into the wind but I was satisfied enough to see 7.18 flash up on the Garmin at the end of it. Strangely, the field at this point had already strung out and I had plenty of room around me. the second mile slowed to 7.30 as expected, and in the third mile it was just a case of continuing to battle the wind, up a slight incline and down a farm lane to the turnaround cone. I've no idea how fast the third mile was but seem to thing I was averaging 7.31m/m at the halfway point which is only a few seconds outside my Parkrun PB !

As soon as I turned the cone, I felt the benefit of the backwind, however because of the battle with the wind I had no real energy left and tried to make the most out of it. Mile 4 was 7.37 and mile five a little slower at 7.51. As I had aimed to keep an average of 7.50m/miles before the race, I was happy to see that it was 5 miles before I even hit this benchmark. About 250 metres into the last mile though I got struck with really bad stitch and had to slow right down to a trot in an effort to reduce my breathing and to lighten the pain. This was annoying as I saw people coming past and must have looked like I'd badly blown up, but little by little I recovered and got back into Brigg with a 8.09 last mile. Now it was a strong run to the finish and crossing the line with a time of 48.18 which is my fastest 10k for 18 months.