I hadn’t realised this would be the 10th anniversary event this year when I entered it. I was drawn in solely by the Star Wars themed medals for this and the half marathon. It wasn’t really a race I wanted to do ,mostly because I wanted a break after the marathon before needing to start Berlin marathon training, but I felt I’d committed myself to doing it.

I parked up about a mile away from the race start, and had a gentle jog to the Weatherspoons where I collected my race number. Apparently there’d be 2,700 runners today, which isn’t bad for a 5K. My race number was 11838… so close to being a reference to George Lucas’ ‘THX 1138’. I think the pollen count must have been higher than normal today, as I found myself coughing a lot before the start, like something was tickling my throat.

Due to this being a wide road with a centre reservation, there was a start line on both lanes, one called ‘The Light Side,’ and the other ‘The Dark Side’. I took a seat on the dark side, and listened to the space-themed music play for over half an hour as I’d got nothing better to do. A few stretches after that, and I lined up for the start. I wasn’t sure how this would go, as it’s been a while since I’d done a proper 5K, but figured if I ran at a 6:30/mi pace or thereabouts, it wouldn’t be too quick on marathon legs, and should hopefully leave them in a reasonable enough condition for tomorrow’s half marathon.

I took it easy to start with, for the up hill to the right turn. There were actually moment during this short stretch when I thought I might have been running fast again too soon. I was a little tired, and my calves felt a little tight still - I was hoping they wouldn’t cramp up.

They did ease though by the end of the first mile, and after that I tried to keep a steady pace. It was looking like it could rain at any minute, and my pace started to creep up a little. People were cheering from the odd place at the side of the road, or from bridges.

After two miles I was close to 6:00/mi, but had overdone it a little and walked for a little under a minute to catch my breath. It was very brief though, and I got going again I was running a lot faster than before, and tried to hold that for the remainder of the course. I could see the McDonalds sign ahead, so knew I was about there. I held on to the pace as best I could, and then saw the finish line ahead. I kept saying to myself, “don’t sprint, don’t sprint, remember you’ve got a half tomorrow.”

It more or less worked, and I crossed the finish line in position 138 out of 2,388 finishers with a time of 19:34. Yeah, that really was a slow one, but to be fair, it was meant to be. I ran the 5K back to my car after that, slowly, trying to keep my legs in a reasonable state.