I didn’t race the usual Thursday night time-trial last week. These road racers are a real bunch of wimps, first little sign of a flash-flood on the course and they cancel the race ;-)
Some of us have raced 24hrs in worse weather than that….
Anyway, I had to wait until this Wednesday to get my mid-week fix, with my first running race in 51 weeks, a reasonably short one at only 10k, and all tarmac.
I got a place on the front row of the 140+ runners in the hope of getting a good start. Someone off to my left fluffed it slightly, they jumped the gun, going on the ‘One’ of the countdown, realised their mistake, stopped and then started again. Those of us on the right side avoided this hiccup and we headed down the short start straight and up the first hill. I somehow managed to lead the first half mile, up the hill and along part of the straight at the top. There was a group of around 8 of us who ran together down the next hill into Humby then two runners slowly got away from the pack as we headed up towards the main road. We began to string out a bit on the road up to Sapperton but I held 10th place as went through the village and around the S bends towards Braceby, passed Mr Reeves (what were you doing watching? You should have been racing!). A couple of familiar faces passed me at this point, the two guys from the Lincoln team with whom I had been fighting for 5th place last year, we all commented (briefly and rather breathlessly) on how much faster the race was this year. The long road back from Braceby to Ropsley always seems to take forever and it was no different this year. I was pushing hard, trying both to catch Nigel Watkin (Southwell AC) in front and hold back Oliver Webb (Stamford Tri Club) who seemed intent on getting out of the wind by tucking in behind me, presumably to save his energy for a sprint finish. I failed at the first of these objectives but just about managed the second, beating him in the sprint for the line.
10k, or 6.2 miles if you prefer, and I would prefer if it weren’t for the fact that 10k is a nice round number, with 251ft of climbing in 0:37:22 was a mixed result. I was around half a minute faster than last year but I only finished 12th, 5 places lower down. The standard of competition seemed higher and it was a nice close race. Ian Bailey and Matt Blunden (both Sleaford Town AC) were miles ahead, but 3rd down to 15th were separated by around 3 minutes, then a bit more of a gap to the main body of the runners.
Normal service will be resumed on 12th with the next round of the BMBS at Wasing.
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