Armagh 5k

I've never really considered the possibility of running this race before because I'm generally in training for a spring marathon when it it is on.

When Kevin Quinn approached me in January about running it this year for his company "Real Runners" I decided I would give it a go.  I've heard so many great things about this race and obviously seen people running outrageously fast times on it over a number of years.  I didn't want to look back in a few years time and have never experienced this event.

After 533 miles in 5 weeks, I decided to take a full rest day on Monday to try to get a bit of bounce in my legs that I would need for a 5k.  If it's as fast as people say, then I wanted to try to take advantage of that.  I actually felt worse on Tuesday than I normally would but come race day, I felt pretty good throughout the day, but with the race starting at 8:20pm the day really did drag.

I'd had a huge sleep of 10 hours the night before so it surprised me that I accidentally fell asleep in my room at 5pm for another hour!  I woke up feeling so groggy but by the time we were warming up, I was feeling awesome.  I was bouncing along on my strides, I felt incredible.  The course was a 1030m loop around the outside of a small open park in the city centre.  You can see why people run so fast here.  The course was rapid, the crowds were huge, the atmosphere is incredible and the field was so stacked you would be in a race every step of the way.

At 8pm, we made our way across to the start line.  It was pretty cold so I left getting down to vest and shorts until the last minute.  They were about to get us underway when a radio message came through to say there was an ambulance on the course.  We were told the race would start when the ambulance had cleared the course but they werent sure how long that would be.  After 5mins stood in my vest and shorts I was starting to get very cold so asked if I had time to get my top back on and was told yes so I went back and put it on.  Eventually we got underway and as I did on the warm up, I felt superb, legs were full of bounce and I felt like I was flying.  There were some good athletes just in front of me approaching 1km including Matt Bowser so it was something of a surprise to be shouted through 1km in 3:00.  This shocked me as I'd been warned how rapid the first km always is, but it seemed like the whole field was together!  The field was so bunched, the corners were getting a little messy but I felt like I was continuing to move well and a much more satisfying 2km split of 5:53 was read out, the race had started to string out now, I was in a good sized group and despite the first split I thought I was in the right place and moving well enough to nail a quick time.

I stayed strong for the rest of the race, always felt like I was moving well, increased my position and had some good athletes around me.  So it was something of a surprise when I crossed the line in an unofficial time of 14:56.  It's a weird one because if I hadn't looked at my watch then based on how well I felt like I was moving and the way I had ran the race, I would have expected to see a time of around 14:30 on the watch but obviously that didn't happen!!

The atmosphere at the race was incredible, it's a superb 5km to do and I'm glad I've now experienced it.  But I don't train twice a day to experience events.  I train to run fast and I didn't run fast which disappoints me.  Part of me is telling myself that I'm marathon training and if I wanted to run a fast 5km, then big mileage and slogging round a muddy cross country for 7 miles at 5:45 mile pace and racing a half marathon as your two previous races aren't exactly going to lend themselves to running a fast 5km.  But I'm following a tried and tested formula that I know works for me running a good marathon and that is the sole aim at the moment, everything else is just part of the preparation for that.  But at the same time I don't want to throw all my eggs into one basket so hopefully I can nail a good few races over slightly longer distances in coming weeks - certainly the signs have been encouraging in recent weeks.  In a similar way to when I ran Blackburn 5k in July (and ran 14:55) I feel I'm only 3-4 weeks away from being in shape to maintain that pace over 10k (I ran 29:58 four weeks after Blackburn).

In conclusion I'd recommend anyone looking for a decent 5k road race to give Armagh a go, it's a quality event, I just wish we had a few races like that in the UK. 

Cheers
Dave