Bristol Running Resource

Tonight saw the last Bridge Inn 5k for 2009 and so to honour this the wind decided to throw in its ‘tupence’ worth. I arrived as normal with less than 30 mins to go, the usual crowd were there. But as I started my warm up I realised that there were a few good runners in the pack as well.

Parking isn’t great for the Bridge Inn and I was parked a little way up the road from race HQ as I walked over the Bridge to the HQ the bridge was shaking by the force of the wind.

On my warm up I have to admit I was not sure how to race given the course is an out and back course. first half is with the wind the second against the wind, do I go out hard and try to match front guys or do I save my energy for the second half of the race against the wind, that’s where experience comes in and I am still very much on the learning curve.

Well the gun went off and as usual I went off with a quick start, but I soon tapered that off by the 1/2 k mark and very quickly settled into my own race, as usual I seemed to end up racing by myself, about 10m in front of me were  two runners, I used them to pull me through especially the very windy sections. By the last half K they had split but I still had one runner in front of me (Ben Morley) and I started to realise that with each stride I was gaining on him and soon made up the 10m and with 200m to go I past him, Ben seemed to respond and with 50m to go I felt I had to put one last push in and opened up my legs and finished 3 seconds in front.

The provisional results showed I came home in seventh place in a poor time of 17:13 (my worst of the year). My races over the past couple of weeks have been hard in different ways, but I have to be pleased, but still disappointed, in hind sight I should have run harder.

Something I will use in my next race which will be next year now, with the imminent arrival of baby number 2, I need to be around and support Emma as best I can that means not being out for three to four hours whilst racing. This doesn’t mean I won’t be running it just means that I will be training as best as I can (probably harder) and use this break in racing to build on my progress this year.

I will be pulling together a training schedule for the next three months and will post it on this blog and report my progress against it.