Race Date: 5.9.2010
Official Finishing Time: 40:50 chip time, 41:12 gun time (PB)
Official Position: 142 (136 chip time)/2677
Race number: 80

My previous 10k race, and in fact my first 10k road race, was 2 months ago in Darlington (race report here). I managed 40:53 there, so this was a PB, if only by three seconds. This was to be the race where I break the 40min barrier for 10k, but it wasn’t my day. It went fine until 6k, but the splits were awful after that. The start was fairly crowded, but the starting pens helped a little. I started from the 36-40min pen, but it seems that many people were a bit too optimistic about their abilities, as I must’ve overtaken at least a hundred runners in the first 5k. I did lose maybe 10 places in the last 3k, but none of the people I overtook would’ve been under 40min.

The race was well organised and I don’t really have any complaints, except perhaps the location, which was some four miles from Middlesbrough railway station, meaning that I had to take the taxi to get there. The goodie back included a decent technical shirt, a keyring, a medal and a Mars bar. The only thing I would’ve liked in addition was a sports drink, as I didn’t take one with me. I’m not too bothered about the medal, so I would’ve gladly exchanged that for a drink. What I found really great was that I got the results via a text message a mere hour after finishing the race. That’s amazing compared to the two or so weeks that I’ve had to wait with some races! The bag storage worked very smoothly as well. Certainly a race that I would do again.

The weather was really nice and sunny — almost too warm in fact. There was a little bit of wind as well. Nothing too significant, but the headwind hit me just as I was struggling anyway, and on one of the only uphill bits. The route itself is fairly flat though, and certainly a fast one, if not quite as fast as the Darlington Pit Stop 10k. The total height gain as recorded by my Garmin was 32m, compared to 16m on the Pit Stop route. There were some bands along the route playing mostly well known rock tunes, which was actually quite nice. Godd support from spectators as well, although my personal favourite was a drunkard (barely) standing at a bus stop, clearly not quite sure about what was happening around him (I hope he wasn’t waiting for the bus anyway, as the road was closed for traffic).

Like I said, the first half of the race went as planned, and I was feeling pretty good at the 5k point. By 7k my pace had dropped over the 4min mark but I was still doing ok, until the windy uphill bit hit me. I totally lost my pace and felt that sub 40min is probably not on, which caused an additional lack of motivation and a terrible ninth kilometer. I feel that I could’ve taken it back a little on the last kilometer, but the motivation just wasn’t there. The result was just a PB, but it didn’t feel like it: my performance in Darlington was much more consistent, and in fact according to my Garmin I did 10k in exactly 40min there.

Splits (according to Garmin):
1k 4:22 (~4:00 chip time)
2k 3:59
3k 3:53
4k 3:54
5k 3:52
6k 4:00
7k 4:07
8k 4:14
9k 4:27
10k 4:12
10.06k 0:11
Total: 10.06k in 41:11

I set the Garmin off with the gun, so in reality the first split is pretty much exactly 4:00. The extra 60m is due to that as well. As you can see, it all went wrong after 6k. I could come up with some excuses for not performing better — such as the fact that I had some trouble sleeping last night and wasn’t perhaps ideally focused for the race — but really I think I just haven’t progressed very much in the last two months. Only one thing to do then: get some more training miles in! That won’t help with the Great North Run though, which is in just two weeks’ time, but I think I’ll look for another 10k race before the year is over.

Garmin data here.
Official results here.