Sheffield 10K

It was my first race for five months today - a comeback race so to speak. I'd not done many sessions but I had done quite a lot of running and was looking to lay down a marker for the rest of the season. My 10k PB was fairly soft and I felt that anything less than breaking it would be pretty disappointing.

The day started ok but I wasn't fooling anyone that I wasn't extremely nervous. Shouting at Chris at Wetherby services for not filling the car up with petrol quickly enough probably gave the game away. I calmed down a little once we got there and had collected my number but still felt a bundle of nerves. Luckily Chris and my mum were able to come and keep me company in the athletes hotel reception which helped and the fact we had separate toilets (no queues) also made me feel a bit better (strange how the mind works!). Benita Johnson asked my mum to pin her race number to her back which certainly made her day and will be brought up on many occasions I feel!

Unfortunately, after that, things started to go a bit rubbish and the result was:

12th in 35:15

To be honest I probably couldn't have picked a worse race for a comeback race. I knew beforehand that I was going to be on the female only start but I thought that with it being the England Championships, it would attract plenty of female runners of similar ability to me. However, to my horror I found myself lining up with only 13 other athletes, most of which were seasoned internationals and who had run significantly faster than me. It did little to calm my nerves.

Determined to be positive, despite the realisation that I wasn't going to get quite such a good race as I had been hoping for, I tried to just go through my routine as best I could. I am a habitual fast starter and often pay the price later in the race so I just concentrated on trying to run the splits that I had discussed with Chris. For once in my life I actually managed to be fairly disciplined and was only a couple of seconds up at 2K. Unfortunately by 2K I was also in splendid isolation. Infact I already had been for quite some time. I was about 8-10s down on the group by 1K, but I wasn't surprised and didn't panic, knowing that it would have been worse to have been in the group and about to blow up. By 3K I had slowed a bit but, still feeling good, I pushed on to try and get back on target. I felt like I was caning it, but my splits just stayed constant. Despite my efforts I just wasn't able to get back on it. I seemed to just keep trundling along at the same pace all the way to the finish.

It was strange. I know I am in better shape than that. Much better. Some of the tempo's I have done and a time trial a couple of weeks ago had told me what might be realistic. I wasn't even that distressed at the end. Having said that I did try! I just found it incredibly hard, in my first race for some time, to come back and run to my ability in what was in effect a time trial. As if the lack of anyone to latch onto or race against isn't enough, when you're running completely alone you seem to notice every tiny incline, every bit of breeze, everything, anything.

They say you just need to learn from your mistakes and my learning from today is that I need to pick my races a bit better for the purpose that they are intended to serve. Today was just too intense on the elite start and I am just not good enough to be able to compete well at that sort of level. Not at the moment anyway. I need to progress considerably as an athlete before I can handle that sort of pace!

Looking at the positives ( I haven't written this for a few hours as I couldn't think of any). There was nothing wrong with me in the race, which there has been in the last few, so no mystery fatigue or illness etc. I felt strong and maintained a consistent pace (albeit slower than planned) to the finish and I got my pace at the beginning right (almost). Still those positives all seem a bit lame right now. When I crossed the line I just felt a bit numb with disappointment, I had been so focused on today for the last few weeks. Since the race, I've just felt more and more upset. Part of me wants to get back out and race again next week to put things right, but the more logical side of me is saying to stick to the plan, be patient. Not much can make me feel better this afternoon, just got to wait for the memory to fade and get back into training tomorrow. But sometimes it feels like running can be a right b*****d. Things rarely seem to go to plan do they?
At the moment I'm thinking of slightly revising my racing plans in light of today and will now try and find another race in the next few weeks (not next weekend though!) to try and make myself feel better.