British Indoor Grand Prix 1500

My blog has covered most of the race so I apologies if I go over the same things.  Got up on race day for a 15 minute loosener which was good with Mo Farah, Mark Draper, Steve Davies and Neil Gamster. Felt good and nice and relaxed.  Warming up for the race I felt prettyrubbish, but as I explaied before that is nothing to worry about and so you just go through the process of getting your warm up right.  30mins before the race start time was 1st call so everything had to be done by then.  After that it is just about trying to stay loose and relaxed as possible,  I actually felt great sitting down waiting, and although I thought we were lead out to the track way too early it was fine as I just took a seat on the track, did a few strides and composed myself.  The only problme is that your mouth really gets dry but I had a bottle of water trackside to help.

I had one gameplane-go to the back, even if it meant almost stopping dead to let everybody go.  This was because the goal was not the race itself, simply get the time of 3.42.0.  Last week at the trials I went out hard and suffered in the middle, today I was going to start sensible and come home strong.  Funny how 'Warbo' still managed to get behind me off the start!!

Anyway because there were no pacemakers the race really played into my gameplan.  I was going to sit and try and get through 800 between 1.58-2.00m then make my move.  I went through spot on in 1.59 ish.  Because the race had not been super quick from the start when I started to make my way through the field I was able to close gaps on guys that would usually be way way ahead.  However, as the race went on I grew in confidence and I was surprised that no-one really was running that hard even 2 laps out.  I think that I caught Bernard Lagat by surprise and managed to get past him and Rui Silva at the bell, and it was this move that suddenly injected pace into the race.  By this point I was running flat out and I didn't quite have enough to get in front of Augustine Choge at the bell.  Had I been able to do that instead of stay wide on the bend I may have been able to pick up another place.  As it was everybody responded and I didn't have the top end gear to hold the big guns, just eing pipped on the line by the always fast finishing Rui Silva.  Still being in the race and almost winning the thing was not actually part of the plan, it was a bonus.  The time was the target.  3.39.17 another sub 3.40 clocking indoors.  Job done.  That time is probably another top ten all time performance by a briton so I'll take confidence from that and hopefully get a little but of luck and a good run in Turin.

Neil