This was the penultimate race I needed to do from 2020, with only the Limassol Half still to go after this. I did consider running to the race and back afterwards, but if I did that then this wouldn't really be much of a tempo session. It would have been an eighteen mile run though which would have helped. It was coplder than it would have been if it'd been at the scheduled date in September 2020, but at least it wasn't raining. I didn’t want to get there too early as it’d be cold, but needed to be there early enough to collect my race number as would the majority of runners.

I parked in the John Lewis carpark (which would cost £4 for the morning) and ran over to Jubilee Square where the race village was located. It was slow to get my race number with six people handing out numbers to over 800 runners. There were also only 9 loos to cover this same group of people, so as you can imagine the queues were long. By the time I reached the front of the queue I’d missed the warmup, and it was now 08:56. I rushed as much as I could and dashed to the start, making my way through the crowds to get somewhere near the sub-40 pacer. When the race started I’d barely got past the sub-45 pacer.

The route down the High Street was completely inside barriers unlike when the half marathon goes through this part of town. Being so far back I had to weave a little in order to hit the pace I wanted, but was also careful as the ground was damp and I know this can be slippery. One near the clock tower there’s then an (almost) hairpin bend to then go onto Granby Street which takes us up and past the train station. From this turn it’s up hill until we reached Victoria Park. That’s 1 mile of up hill, and then half a mile of it being fairly flat so you can attempt to recover. On the way up this I thought about how rough 10Ks can be… it’s like setting off near 5K pace and just trying to hold on for as long as possible. I wasn’t exactly doing 5K pace though, and I was sticking fairly close to the 40 minute pacers. Usually I’d want to be ahead of them, but hoped that maybe for the downhill finish I could try to get a minute or two ahead.

There’s a brief bit of downhill as the route heads onto Welford Road, but as soon as you reach that road it’s uphill. Again. This time I’d had enough and walked for a fifth of a mile up onto University Road. This road I remembered as being fairly flat from my days at University there. That was over fifteen years ago now though, and it was actually undulating. I walked a few more times before the road got up to Victoria Park again, and I was really disappointed in how badly I was doing.

The course didn’t stay with Victoria Park for long and went down the long path from the War Memorial back onto University Road and along this in the opposite direction until the main entrance, and then around the back of the student union and some of the other University buildings until it was back onto Victoria Park. I realised now that I stood no chance of a sub-40 time.

Going back along the outside of the park was as hard as I remember it being from the 5K winter series I did, but the avenue of trees was harder. I decided to have another walking break before the next hairpin bend that would lead out into the car park and then across the road to go down New Walk. It was now mostly down hill from here to the finish so I made sure I kept on running, and didn’t walk again.

When I got to the pedestrianised part of Market Street I would have liked to have walked a bit more, but I knew how close to the finish I was now so I kept on running. I then passed the Cathedral, and made one last right turn onto the finish straight to finish in 42:03. I couldn’t have been more disappointed in that time. I finished 69 out of 816 finishers.

At the finish you get a 500ml carton of water, and then a goodie bag containing the medal, a red technical t-shirt, some cheese and onion corn, and a protein ball.