Great south 10mile

Race report

Great south run

Decided to go down on the day as it was a later start and my best mate Spencer said he would drive which helped a lot, we left at 6.45 am which wasn’t too bad as I got an extra hour in bed thanks to the clocks going back.

We had a good journey down arrived at 8.45 we parked in the Portsmouth football club car park, and we were told it was a short walk to the start any way 30 mins later we arrived at the start got my elite number, saw my mate Kevin Heywood who was also looking for the elite area after about 25 mins of going up and down the seafront which by this time I knew Portsmouth really well and no one knowing were it was ,we got there by chance and a  welcome sight it was.

Once in the tent all the big Names were there Mo/Wickes etc, sat down done my number, chip etc and before you knew it I had to warm up ,went out With Mr Heywood for a jog trying to loosen the legs up never do, soon as we started we knew how tough this race was going to be with this wind especially in the last 2 miles boy I wasn’t wrong .

Got back from warm-up stretched and by then we were called to go to the elite start area to get ready to race.

As the race got under way I didn’t feel great for the first mile never do at the start always takes me a while to get going we had the wind in are face to start and everyone was trying 2 sit behind someone so there was a lot of clipping feet etc.

But it felt good to be back in a race situation as I haven’t really been in a race since August last weeks  nationals I was by myself most of the way.

 First mile we went though in 4.44.pace we were in a group of 8 runners as we headed to the 2^nd mile still had wind in are face , but I was now into my running feeling better 2^nd mile we arrived in 9min.35 sec so still going along nicely still in the big group got to 5k in 15.10 feeling good next mile came along it was 4.40 mile I was just sitting in the pack , we got to 5miles in 24.20 once we got there my club  teammate Mark Draper put a burst in a got a gap and for ½ mile we were chasing we caught back up and it settled down again.

 We headed along towards the six mile got there in 29.20 still about 6 of us in the pack including my Runnerslife teammate Ben Moreau which was nice anyway 10k arrived went though in 30min 20sec again on schedule for sub 49 min all of a sudden the pace got quicker no names mentioned  Runnerslife  clue so had to start working even more now we dropped 2 runners so we were down to 4 in the group including Ben.

As you get to the eight mile mark you turn and go  onto the seafront as soon as we turned the corner all my god it was like a scene from the film twister the wind was so strong ,we could see Barnabas Bene just a head and little further up the road was Lee Merrien so we focused on closing in down Bene me and Ben had a great idea of doing what they do in cycling draughting and it kind of worked considering how lean we are, we caught Bene at about 9 miles so there were still 5 in the group intill the last 400 metres than two broke away and the last 50 meters were between me and Ben the battle of the Runnerslife Team and it is fair to say that both of us are not known for our sprint finishes but the honour goes too wait for it ………….. Moreau damm but we did have laugh about are sprint finish.

Overall very happy the way the race went finished 13^th position and was sixth Brit home finishing time 49.33 min ,me and Ben had a look at his GPS watch to see have much that wind had put on are time we went from 4.44milein to 5.10 and 5.12 so we lost about 45/50 secs which would have put us way under 49 min never mind there is always next time

It was good too Catch up with Ben who is a really good guy ,one thing about this website is that I have made some new mates which is always a bonus

Roll on the x/c relays