Loughborough International

The Loughborough International is a great event to target early in the season if you're looking to get things off to a good start. This year was my 3rd in a row, competing in a 3rd distance at this fixture! The fact that I live so close to Loughborough, only a 30 minute drive from the centre of Nottingham, means that I'm always keen to compete. I had originally entered myself as a guest for the 5000m race. I received a call on the Wednesday before the race offering me a place in the Scotland team for the match event. I was delighted to be offered another Scotland vest, but sorry to hear the bad news that it was due to another athlete recently sustaining an injury.

On the day of the race, I was feeling very confident in my ability to run well. Training had been going remarkably well leading up to the event. I estimated that I was in shape to run under 14 minutes, which I thought could of been good enough to win the race on a good day. Unfortunately, the conditions were not exactly ideal for fast times, with a very strong head-wind on the back straight slowing the pace down by approximately 2 seconds per lap. I had realised from watching previous races on the day that the times across many track races were way down on what they would usually be at this high-standard fixture.

The pace was set at sub 14 minutes through 3k, and it was at this point that I started to struggle. The lead group consisted of Johny Hay, James Walsh and Luke Gunn. Knowing that all three of them had attended the altitude camp in Font-Romeu, I was aware that these guys would be in good shape. Over the final 2k, I accepted that the fact that i'd been training for 1500m for the past month and was going through a period of transition from 5k training; I was really feeling the speed-work in my legs. I finished the race strongly, coming home in what was a disappointing yet respectable 4th place, with 14.26. My splits were pretty consistent throughout the race, with only a couple of laps in the middle where i'd gone through a bit of a bad patch. With the knowledge in the back of my mind that my performance over 1500m will be much stronger, I walked away from the race with a positive attitude looking forwards to my next race.