Just one week before this race I ran the Leicester 10K during my last few weeks of training for the Yorkshire Marathon. I’d had a slow year, mostly in the build-up to the longest races I’ve ever done, but marathon training wasn’t going too badly – even though it was greatly condensed from what I’d normally do.

Even though I knew my training was so far exhausting, I wanted to try and PB at 10K. For this I booked Leicester 10K, Stratford’s Big 10K, Thoresby 10, and even the Ashborne 10 for 2018 should I need it. Although my hope, and my training was aiming for Leicester, I wasn’t that sure I could do it. My goal was to go sub-40 and tick off my first pace related goal of 2017 even though the countdown to the end of the year had begun.

I did it though. I ran sub-40 and even took off a good chunk of time to get me closer to a sub-39 goal. I hadn’t expected that, and I hadn’t expected it to be sub 39:30 either. This left me with a question of what to do for Stratford’s Big 10K. The way I saw it, I had the following options:

1. Take it easy and enjoy the scenery, and then maybe follow it up with a 7 mile recovery run,
2. Try to get another sub-40 time to prove the last one wasn’t a fluke,
3. Go off at sub-39 pace and see how long I can hold it for knowing that I’d burn out early and not manage sub-40 either

I liked the idea of option 1, but I didn’t think I could do it. I like to work hard and to keep pushing, so that meant realistically it was going to be one of the latter two options. Which of them though I decided I’d figure out on the day – to see what the race conditions would be like.

Car parking for the event is pay and display, and isn’t as expensive as it has been for some events. It cost me £3 for three hours parking which I figured would be enough to wait for the event to start, run the 10K, and get 5 or 6 miles recovery run done afterwards.

I made my way to the 30-45 minute pen, and was the first one there. One of the organisers joked that I might win it – though of course that’s still an impossibility, but he repeated it over the speakers later to get more people to assemble in the pens. Great. Now people are going to be thinking I’m fast – all I want to do is put in a reasonable effort, not destroy my legs. At 09:30 we were led from the pens to the starting line on the road – some Kenilworth Runners were already there having skipped the pens.

The start was up hill to a roundabout, and the along rolling hills through the countryside. I wasn’t sure what the course as going to be like, so I just ran without really aiming for a pace. Running at a pace that felt good was a refreshing change from last week, but some of the hills did cause me to slow fractionally.

In the first couple of miles I also found my progress blocked for a while when I encountered several runners that were side-by-side and not letting anyone pass. I think it’s fine to run alongside a friend or two, but I really think they should have had some consideration for others – particularly when there were five or six of them.

Eventually I passed them by running on the grassy embankment, and caught up with a couple of other runners who had managed to pass them a little earlier. One of them was actually the first lady (as in the front-most lady in the race, not the wife of the President of the United States), and the other was a guy who was being very energetic. Every time he saw someone walking passed, spectating, or marshalling he would start shouting and waving his arms crazily. I found it amazing, but I realised one of two things:

1. he’s that fast, that the pace we were going at was just an easy run for him so had all the energy to burn (this was the most likely),
2. he was underestimating the energy it’d take and would crash before the end.

Those two were fast, but I decided I’d try to keep up with them – just for the motivation. A little after the 4km marker we cut through a car park onto the Stratford Greenway near Milcote. The Stratford Greenway is a bridleway that is surfaced with crushed limestone – a similar surface to the Tissington Trail I’d raced on earlier in the year. It’s better than running on grass would be, but it’s still a trail that gets waterlogged and muddy. What it does mean though is that it’s fairly flat and a chance to either speed-up or try to recover from the hills that had preceded it.

I found myself slowing and adjusting my strides to try and clear each puddle rather than run through them, and also jumped over the odd muddy patch as well. It carries on all the way until about 5 miles when you run close to the racecourse. I remembered seeing a water station with water bottles too, but I ran straight passed it.

Every time we passed a marshal they cheered the first lady and made sure she knew she was first. The energetic guy that had been running a stride behind her was starting to slow though so I caught up and ran alongside them briefly. Eventually the energetic guy seemed to go quiet and dropped back, so I had no idea how he did in the end though I suspect it was well. The lady who had been running strong up until this point suddenly came to a complete stop just after 8km.

I slowed down to check she was okay, and it looked like she was just trying to catch her breath. As she was okay I carried on running, but tried to encourage her by shouting “you can do it!” whilst running backwards before turning around and carrying on with focusing on my own run. I’d still got a little under 2km left to go.

I realised I’d got quite a bit left in my legs but decided not to push. It felt like a steady pace so I maintained it as I ran uphill along along an alleyway, and eventually alongside the River Avon. It goes passed the church, the Courtyard Theatre, and the RSC building.

When the route cut into the park alongside the river I thought the race was about over, but I couldn’t yet see the finish line. I was careful not to run too fast around the bend as it crosses the river, and then ran along the bridge until the final corner. From there I was tempted to sprint, but instead I just upped the pace a little to make sure I’d still finish in under 40 minutes.

I finished in position 29 out of 1,036 finishers (putting me in the first 2.8%) with a time of 39:50. I’d proven my result from Leicester hadn’t been a fluke, and had done it with enough in my legs to go for a 5 mile run straight after. Next week I’ll be doing a 21 mile (or maybe 22) training run, but will be back racing the week after at Robin Hood for my second go at their half marathon. My hope is that it’ll be a chance to tick off another of my running goals for 2017.

At the race finish they gave me a finishers medal, a bottle of water, and from Nuffield Health there was a tote bag and banana.