I was hoping for a big performance here after coming back from Font Romeu where i'd been training so well. I was happy to follow the pace as I knew I could cope with going through in around 8:10 and hopefully not fall off it too much in the last few laps.

The race got underway I we went through the first 800 in around 2:11 which was feeling comfortable and again at the mile around 4:21 I still felt nice and relaxed. Scott paced us to 6 laps which I think we reached in around 6:34 where I still felt nice and relaxed. It was within the lap where it all went wrong for me. My body seemed to shut down and not want to run anymore, my breathing rate began to increase drastically, my chest tightened and my legs became heavy. I tried to fight this over the next lap or so but it just wasn't happening and I reached 3K in 8:18 having done the last 600 in 1:44 (69sec lapping) I knew that I was starting to back peddle big time. 

It was then I thought do I keep trying to work my kill myself to scrape a pb or do I just see the race out and make sure I get round without running myself into the ground as I knew I wasn't right. I opted to just see the race out as I seen that as a more sensible option and covered the final 2k in 6 minutes.

I finished and I was pretty frustrated as I didn't really know what was going on as I'd done all this hard work and couldn't understand why I'd felt so bad. After the race I had a chat with the coach and I realised that having come down from altitude only 7 days ago possibly made a huge impact on my performance and I just had to put it behind me. I sound like I'm making excuses and it looks like to any outsider I just went off too hard and died, my initial thought too but since the race i've read up about the short term negative effects when arriving back from altitude and also spoke to a few other athletes and I'm fairly sure that what caused me to feel so bad. 

Hopefully I can go out in my next race, maybe a slightly more relaxed pace that this one and just concentrate on chipping away at my personal best and the results will come with time.

A race to forget but it's still very early this season for me with lots more to come.