Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Stoneyford 10K Race

Last Friday I decided I'd give the Stoneyford 10km a go on Sunday, its a local race and I've been meaning to do it for a few years but I've either ended up working on the day or stuff got in the way.

Although I had around 35miles already in the legs from training earlier in the week I figured I "might" be able to pull off a sub40 with my previous personal best being 44:22 in 2012 and the fact I managed 43:30 as a training run a few weeks back.

So quick warm up and I felt good before the race and I headed out with the 40min pacer, however I knew from about 1mile in that my legs felt tired and it was going to be a challenge, shortly after at around the 1.5mile mark I decided it was best to drop off the pacer group as today it just wasn't going to happen.

After that I kept on going trying to at least catch the one person ahead of me but at the same time not go all out,  I knew by the time that I hit the 5km mark that I was realistically looking at a 42 or 43min finish time but I also knew there were some down hills after Kells and coming in towards the finish that I'd be able to make up time on.

Just after the 5km mark one other runner passed me, this was the only person to pass me after I dropped off of the pacer group at 1.5miles, my goal at this stage was to pass the closest runner to me before the finish and I managed this at around the 5mile mark.

After that I had the downhill towards the finish to look forward to and so I pushed on and finished in 42:20 (29th place) and 4th from Kilkenny City Harrier's Club across the line.


In hindsight aiming for a sub40 was perhaps idealistic considering I had 35miles already clocked in the week and 16 of those were on Thursday with only one rest day before the race, still I've knocked almost 2min off my previous personal best from the JJ Ready 10km in 2012 so its still a good outcome and I felt fine afterwards.

I'll be back for that sub40 next year! :)

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