I had had a good winter by my standards, training wise. I’d kept on the football, ran a bit, not over indulged at Christmas and when I saw that there was to be a 10k on closed roads in central London at the end of January I entered immediately.
It looked like a very good route. Starting in Westminster we would head out on a loop past some of London’s most famous landmarks including The London Eye, St Paul’s Cathedral, Big Ben, Tower of London and Trafalgar Square. It was a reasonably flat course, so I was determined to go under 50 minutes. My personal best was 49’54” set back in 2012. How hard could it be to knock a few seconds off that?
As it was a winter run, it was important not to get cold before the start. However, being a dry winter day there was no way I could run with multiple layers on. The solution, provided by the organisers, was to have collection bins for unwanted clothes. So just before the start we could remove an old t-shirt or two, drop them in the bins, and they’d be collected for charity.
Then I had a stroke of luck. I was chatting to a girl on the start line, and we got to mentioning times. She was aiming for 47 or 48 minutes. She also looked very much like an athlete, and sounded confident, and so I figured she was probably going to achieve that. I mumbled something about her pacing me to a personal best, and she agreed on the proviso I ran at a regular pace and didn’t talk during the run. Both were fine by me.
I set my watch to show my time per km, did some last minute stretches, and then we were off. Then decided to ignore my watch and just to stick with my pacer. Aging eyesight meant it was hard to see its face anyway, with the numbers too small to read while running. Being the Winter Run the organisers had helpfully scattered some snow machines along the route, which was fun in a way. I settled into the groove, and decided my body was feeling good and that if she was on the correct pace it could get interesting. After 4k she muttered “just under 20minutes”. Keeping that going would mean a sub 50, but by how much?
A little while later we started on a long downhill section, so I thought I’d speed up a little. Get some free yards in. This did not make my pacer happy, as she demanded I slowed. “Don’t blow up” she advised.
I did as I was told, and carried on. The 7 and 8 km markers came and went, and still my legs felt good even if a bit tired. On to the Strand, for the last bit. At the 9km marker I still had form, and started to accelerate a bit. Then she told me just to run as hard as I could without going into the red, until the last 100 meters or so, and then “you should break 50 minutes”.
That was what I wanted to hear, so I pushed on. Coming into Trafalgar Square I saw the finish line and really pushed hard. I crossed the line, almost collapsed, and tried to stop my watch. And failed*. So I had no clue as to my time, which was frustrating to say the least. However, my pacer finished shortly after me and said that according to her watch she’d broken 50 minutes, meaning I had to. I was happy.
I then went to retrieve my sports bag from the bag drop area, to get into some fresh post-run clothes. As I got out my phone, I received a text from the race organisers with the official time 47’30”.
I was now very happy.
*I used the watch only once more in a race, the British 10k later that summer. It was a Suunto T5, and frankly the illogical button usage, the small font, and the weird way it displays information (or rather, the difficulty of switching between elapsed time and pace which are the two key bits of data I like) drove me nuts. So after I completed the summer 10k, again in the dark re time and pace, I saw a TomTom stand doing a deal on their GPS enabled Runner 2 watch, with cardio and music built in.
It is superb.
Large font, easy to scroll between different info, space for 300 songs or so, measures my heart-rate, all for £149.
No comments:
Post a Comment