Craig Gibbons' Lifeblog lifeblog://tri.eat.net

London Pride 10k – A new PB

One of the guys at work sent around a mailer a few weeks ago, asking if anybody was interested in doing the London Pride 10k Run on August 18th. As with most of these events, it was for a good cause and in this case it was also sponsored by Merrill Lynch, so I figured why not and signed up right away. There's nothing like a 10k race to up your speed over the longer distances, so the race doubled as some good speed training. One tends to slow down pretty quick as soon as you shift into long distance pace training. I'm really glad I went along that day. The weather was fine, Victoria Park was in good form and the runners were all well up for it, even the fairy godfather

Standing on the start line, with all that pre-race tension and competitiveness building, I could see my heart rate monitor starting to register the excitement building inside me, climbing from 60bpm resting, to 120bpm by the time the gun went off.  By then, as with all the races I do lately, I had edged my way to the front of the pack for the start. I figure if somebody is going to pass me they can work for it, rather than me having to fight my way through a pack of slower runners. This approach worked well at the Bananaman 10k, but a stronger type of runner turned out this day and even though I lead the race for the first 1k, a group of 3 faster runners come past and I didn't see them again. A 10k race is always a sprint and after some others passed me, I found my stride and maintained a solid pace for the rest of the race, seeing off a few challenges from those with my position in their sights, eventually finishing lucky 13th for a new personal best of 36:18.