British Athletics League Premiership (Rd 2)

“Out of the Frying Pan and straight into the Fire” would be an apt saying to describe this race.  Team Manager Dean Hardman had asked me two weeks before the race if I would run the 3000m here and I said that I wasn’t fit enough and hadn’t done a track session for some time.  However, when he came back to me and said he had selected his team and he was going to field somebody who was in 9:20 shape, I had got a session under my belt which suggested I would run significantly faster than that and so I volunteered to run.  I wouldn’t be at my best, but it would help the team and based on past experience, would help me if I decided to run the 5000m the following week at Solihull.

I had ran 3x1000m off a 2min recovery on the Monday the week of the race and was running 2:50-2:51 for these.  The week I ran my 3000m PB of 8:21, I was averaging 2:42s so based on being 8secs per rep down on my session I expected to run around 8:45.  With me being the B runner, this should pick up some points for the team.

I hadn’t accounted for a much stronger than usual field.  After a steady first 600m with the whole field together, it really picked up and three of the sixteen runners were cut adrift from the rest.  I was one of the three.  The first 2km was 5:47 and then one or two seemed to be coming back to us so I made an extra push to try to close them down.   I did close slightly, the other two lads followed and one came past me in the closing stages and finished like a train to pick up five places on the last lap.  I ran exactly 8:45, which is what I predicted, but I hadn’t predicted that all 16 runners would be finished inside 8:46.  It felt like a bit of a wasted journey having not contributed much to the teams points tally.  However then the team result came through and we had moved into a very narrow lead overall.  Having since raced at Solihull over 5000m, I know that doing this 3000m definitely helped my performance there.  So most definitely a case of “Straight into the Fire” but I’m starting my season quite late and I’m going to need to race to bring me on and give myself a chance of ending the season with some respectable seasons bests.

Cheers,
Dave