Great Manchester Run

The Great Manchester Run is a race I always like to try and do as it is local for me and I always get good crowd support there from many people that I know.  It's always nice to race a big race in your home city and they don't come any bigger than this in Manchester.

My training since London has been limited due to a hamstring injury, which is improving (slowly) thanks to a rehabilitation programme set by Duncan Mason at Athlete Matters Physiotherapy.  In fact, the day before this race was the first day since before London that I have ran and haven't felt anything.

I had ran the Rothwell 10k two weeks earlier in a relatively even paced 31:16 and wanted to try to break 31mins here.  I knew that in this race people would go off at sub 2:50 per km and had to distance myself from that as I would pay for it if I got involved with that.  As it was, I did distance myself from it and went through the first kilometre way down, but in a swift 2:56.  I felt relaxed but certainly wouldn't want to be going any quicker.  2km came in 5:55 and 3km in 9:00 so I knew I was on 30min schedule.  I also knew we were running into the wind and had the wind behind us on the way back and did momentarily wonder if there was any possibility of me running sub 30mins!  I know it is a race that has produced fast times before and I was feeling good with a wind assisted second half still to come.

As it was, 4km was reached in 12:12 and 5km in 15:14, it would depend on just how much benefit we would get from the wind on the way back.  Most of the race so far had been on long straight roads and I'd been on the back of a good group headed by Ben Fish and Chris Powner and feeling very good.  It seemed a "sensible" group, slowly clawing back towards those in front.  As we reached halfway, Ben and Chris were the ones to push on ahead of the group and I was sitting five metres behind them, pulling away from the rest of the group I had been in.  Beyond 5km, the course started to feature a few twists and turns and a couple of very minor inclines which was enough to tighten my hamstring a little, but at this stage I was still moving well.  A lot of people had gone off very very quick and I was still closing on most of the people I could see ahead.  At 8km, I thought I was about to get on the back of Andi Jones and Chris Parr but they moved away again.  I had a little battle with two guys running for Wales in the last km which was fun, but they got the better of me.   30:48 was my final time which I was happy with under the circumstances.  It was a 28sec improvement on 2 weeks earlier but I'm still 59secs short of my PB. 

I was surprised not to get more benefit from the wind on the way back but looking at the results there weren't really any clear negative splits - just the odd person running 1-2 secs faster second half.  Everybody's fast start, the twists between 5 and 7k and my tightening hamstrings probably all played a part in that.

Now onto the London 10k where I hope to improve further on my 2011 time and get closer to my PB.  In the week since the 10k, I've continued to make progress with my rehab.

Keep training hard
Cheers,
Dave