Race Report from "Run of the week" Monday 9th May 2022
May 11, 2022
I’ve had the big call up from Dave to write a little (it probably won’t be little!) report from my success at the Victoria Park 10k on Saturday.
I actually only went down as it was a 7.02am train out of Spalding to do this race as I had a big failure in the Vitality 10k on Monday and felt like I had a decent 10k in me.
I stayed in London on Sunday night last week in a Travelodge and felt like it would be a good race for me to run fast. I made the mistake of going into my work’s office on Monday morning and having a big bowl of porridge for breakfast. The race started at 10am and I finished this bowl at 7.15am and to cut a long story short I stepped off the course at just over 6.5km with a biting stitch which I’m putting down to eating too much too close to the race start. Once the stitch had gone down to a more manageable level I re-joined the race in a highly angry and aggressive mindset. I did pick up the pace towards the end but I was very disappointed. 36.20 was the chip time and even as someone who isn’t the most confident person in most walks of life thought I had a lot better than that in me.
Anyway, there’s always another race! Over the last 3-4 weeks Dave had set me some really specific 10k sessions and I was completing them feeling pretty good. Mostly around 6 miles in volume starting off doing longer reps around goal pace and then some shorter reps a fair bit quicker. I’d ticked some of these off doing longer reps at 5.30s and then some 800-1k reps at 5.05s so they’d given me a lot of confidence I could go under 35 for the first time after running 35.11 on a slightly undulating course a few weeks back when I got 2nd place at Bungay 10k.
Dave suggested I found a race and forgot about the race and try again 5 days later.
I’d ran 10k’s in Victoria Park before when living in London and had a 100% PB record on the course running 44.30 and 43.01 there when I used to have no clue about running and used to run 5k two or three times a week as hard as I could thinking I’ll get faster doing that! Forecast looked good, I just ran easy in the five days between the races and rocked up Saturday morning in East London. Got the classic Blizard warm-up done of 10-15mins easy followed by 3mins threshold + stretches and then it was time to go.
We started, a 50m section or so on the grass before hitting the park pavements. All of us together and it felt very easy, quite bunched up for the first 400 or so and it was just a bit slower than I wanted. It was all about the time for me, I really didn’t want to run in a pack if it was going to be a bit slow so I made the call to leave the pack and go out the front on my own with the lead bike. Nobody came with me so it was just me and the bike. The good thing about this was the bike was clearing the path as by this point the park was full of runners doing the other races, runners just running and a shed load of dog walkers! All the marshals were shouting ‘lead runner coming through’ so I loved that as made me feel important! The plan was to hit 5k in 17.20-17.30, I didn’t really look at my watch too much once I got settled down as I knew I was moving at the right sort of pace and I knew I was out alone. I lapped my watch on the 5k marker and saw 17.09 on the screen. I thought bloody hell this could be good! I also remembered Dave’s big words on a 10k that it’s the 5-8km section which is the most important. I didn’t change anything about my pace just continued what I was doing and ticked the km’s off. It was getting pretty warm but the park is very shaded by all the trees, there was a bit of a headwind on one of the straights but nothing like running most days in The Fens! The pace dropped a little but literally only a few seconds. I had no issues with traffic other than on the last lap one guy completely oblivious to the world around him stepped out right in front of me on the tightest corner. I’d slowed anyway as this corner was pretty much a hairpin and gave him a good shove out of the way then continued. I reckon this maybe cost me two seconds but it was nothing major and what you expect I suppose on a sunny day in a London park. I got to the 9km marker well under 17.30 5k pace and as I had the bike clearing the path for me I could take pretty much the shortest route the whole way so the km’s were coming up slightly short on the watch! At 9km I asked the guy on the bike how far I had and he responded in a really broad Aussie accent ‘absolutely miles mate’, this really cracked me up and kind of threw me off my rhythm a bit. I’m not sure why as I know there is a strong Aussie population in London (yes Jen, I even went on a few dates and around an Aussie’s flat a few years ago, I’ll leave that story off here though!) I just wasn’t expecting it.I knew I had won the race by this point but that was never the goal of the day. The goal was to run a fast (for me) 10k. I kicked on a bit after the 9km marker and then again into the finishing straight running a 3.18 last km which again I was pleased with as that is faster than my 5k PB pace! Crossed the line in 34.23 which I was absolutely delighted with as it was faster than my predicted time off a track 5k and a 48sec PB from a 10k I ran just a month ago!
I went straight up to Leeds afterwards to watch the mighty Boston United and indulged in many, many treats. Leeds city centre is fantastic for food. I had a large Pizza Hut, 24 cookies from Millie’s cookies, a Subway, then happened to go past Hotel Chocolat on my way back to Leeds Station so had to go in there, then I took a slight de-tour via Leeds Trinity and got myself a Krispy Kreme then I just happened to go past the Lindt shop near the exit to go back to the station so I went in there too. I really went big on the foods. Will be back on the Blizard lactate special diet of lean proteins, good carbs and lots of greens from Monday!
