A decent turnout of around 70 on the start line today... a tricky race to pace as the first 50mins or so are very good running, followed by at least an hour of sharp climbs/descents, followed by another hour or so of (potentially) good running.
My target being 3hrs, i knew what splits i approximately needed to hit in order to hit the target, and at the first road crossing was approx 3 minutes up and in 7th place.... In fact once the start had settled down i spent the entire race between 6th-8th.
Still running strongly over the tough middle section i found myself 4mins up at the Lawley, but 15mins later at the 2nd road crossing i'd ominously dropped a minute of that already... And worryingly a number of very capable runners haring up as i retraced my steps back down past them.
The long final section with its agonising runnable climb.... i wouldn't call it a capitulation... but i had hoped to run rather more of it... that said i only dropped one place, to Virgil Barton, and we were stride for stride most of the way up, and i comfortably held off the other runners behind.
Reached the final cp on top of the Mynd with 16mins to get down and along the valley then into the park for the finish... i'd banked on needing 15mins for this section so was in with a chance... on fresh legs it would be no trouble at all, but after the best part of three hours i couldn't push any harder... 3hrs passed by as i was heading up the alleyway into the park, and by the time i'd crossed the park i finished in 3:00:45....
8th place (possibly 3rd v40, yet to see official results).
The initial feeling was of course disappointment.... but 45secs in three hours is neither here nor there... and was a pb by a good 10 minutes. As always, i look back at that final hour and surely just a couple of minutes of additional running up the final climb would have made the difference... but at the time it just isn't that simple.
Going back a couple of years i could basically turn up at a race and be guaranteed a pb due to constantly improving.... but this year i see i've done 8 races previously, and only got pb's in 5 of them.... so i'm probably getting a bit closer to the maximum i can get out of myself... hopefully a couple more years of improvement still to come, but i think i'm going to have to accept that to really do well i'm going to have to prioritise races.
Hello to Athers of this forum, clearly having a jog round, as eminently capable of finishing well ahead of me if you wanted to.
Pete
Reply With Quote
