When: 6 April 2014
Organiser: http://regentsparkraces.org/
Course details: Flat run in the park, on tarmac, 3 loops, traffic (but not pedestrian) free
Distance: 10k
Marshalling: excellent - marshals at every point where you could take a wrong turn, shouting encouragement etc. lovely atmosphere
Facilities: Lockers, cafe, showers, etc. at The Hub in Regent's Park
Freebies: Banana (
)First test race of the season - in ideal world this would have been a half-marathon, but of course we're not in an ideal world (and certainly not in an injury-free world), so 10k had to suffice. Discussed the race strategy with the coach the week before - the idea was to run it hard, on tired legs (3h+ bike ride on Sat) and see if I can post a negative split, HR-wise perhaps starting in/around low Z4 and letting it creep up to Z5 on the last loop.
Saturday bike ride felt a bit funny, after a few good weeks spent riding exclusively the Nighhawk (which has clocked in nearly 300 miles already
and needs a mechanical check-up) going back to the good old road bike was quite the experience. Saddle felt too low, position too slack and not aggressive enough - will need to have a closer look at it. After the bike ride we went to a friend's 40th dinner in a lovely Italian trattoria in Soho - where of course I had way too much to eat and a little bit too much to drink. And came back home past midnight, which meant just 6hrs of sleep ahead of the race. Not ideal, but what can one do - it's not like his 40th could wait.So - with this as preamble - woke up at 7am, had eggs on toast for breakfast and headed off to the venue. After some unexpected detours (Westway was closed, for some reason) we arrived at the venue with about 30 mins to spare. Registration took about 3 seconds (I may have blatantly pushed myself into a queue - but I swear there was no-one waiting next to my surname letter!) - pinned the number to my chest, installed the chip on my shoe and still had plenty of time to warm up. A gentle short loop in the park, to get the blood flowing and oil the joint machinery, with a few short sprints thrown in for good measure. Lovely. Except it wasn't - weather was crap in the morning (at any point in time it was either already raining or just about to start raining), so as soon as I took off the tracksuit top & bottom to go to the start line I was cold as sh*t. Ah well, I'll have plenty of time to warm up during the race, won't I.
At the start line a longish race briefing (come on folks, it's just a run) delivered over a portable megaphone which didn't seem to amplify the guy's voice at all, so not particularly useful, although a fantastic opportunity to get even colder (at least it stopped raining) - and off we go.
Set out quite nicely, forcing myself not to pay attention to other people's pace and to focus on my own rhythm, which I think worked well for a time. Good first couple of kilometres that felt surprisingly easy and were surprisingly fast. First loop (3.3k) done in sub-15 mins, which I was quite happy about - although seeing 14:55 as I was crossing the finish line for the first time I realised there was very little (if any) hope of a total time that would fall under the 45-minute mark. Also, by that time my heart rate was sky high already (well in the 160s), and it wouldn't drop for the remainder of the race.
As I was running out on the second lap, I started getting stomach cramps (no idea why, tbh) and my pace dropped - for a couple of kilometres it was a real struggle to keep up with the tempo I had set myself in and I started noticing that people were overtaking me by the dozen (or at least that's what it felt like). The fifth kilometre I barely squeezed in under 5 minutes (4:58) and I knew if I was to post a decent time I had to HTFU. Which fortunately I did - towards the end of the second loop the stomach cramps disappeared as inexplicably as they had appeared and on the finish straight I decided to up the tempo a bit - after all I only had another 15 mins or so of racing ahead of me.
The last loop felt stronger than I had thought it would. I well and truly came back - settled myself in a reasonable pace (4:40-ish) and started to pull back some of the gazelles that had overtaken me in my moments of weakness. On the seventh km I found one of the gazelles in a similarly dark place as I had been 15 minutes before and encouraged him to give a bit more - after all it was the last lap, so there was nothing to conserve energy for. We ran together for a few hundred metres, but a quick glance at my watch told me that he was actually slowing me down, so pushed a bit harder and left him behind in the end. On the last km I dug deep and upped the tempo even more, overtaking a couple more folks - but that left me with just about enough steam to half-sprint on the final straight.
Final result: 46:30 gun time, 46:21 chip time. 119th out of 450. A sub-45 would have (just) landed me in the top 100. Result sheet here: http://www.regentsparkraces.org/results.php
Post-race thoughts: moderately happy. Heavy legs / little sleep / big dinner & weather on the day clearly all influenced the performance in a negative way, which means I have more to give - perhaps a sub-45 could have been within reach, which would have been fantastic to achieve. But, it's a 10k PB by about 6 minutes, and that one comes from before the Great ITB Disaster of 2013, so I've nothing to complain about, really. And, I'm quite chuffed that after a bit of a crisis I managed to put myself back on the straight and narrow, so to speak. Will definitely come back to the race (they run it every month) later in the season to see if with better conditions I can post a faster time.
EDIT: not sure how reliable (probably not overly) the Runner's World race times predictor is, but it spits out a predicted half-mara time of 1:42:29. I'll take that as sign that things are on track.
