National 12 Stage Relays

I arrived back from my warm weather training trip in Portugal the day before this race and was confident of a good run.  I've run this race enough times to have an idea what sort of time is a good run for me.  Unfortunately I found out on my return that we had no team.  I had structured my week around doing this race so decided still to run on the first leg.

The race started and I settled in nicely on the little loop before hitting the hill.  It seemed like the guys right at the front were going very quickly and as we left the loop and came onto the hill, it was already very strung out and gaps were starting to open up.  The hill felt a little harder than I would like, but I was still able to work well off the top of it and start advancing my position.  I was working well in a group with Nick Torry, Dave Mitchinson, James Thie and was happy with the way I was running, although any little inclines weren't feeling very good.  We seemed to be closing nicely as we reached the furthest point, and started to pick off a few of the guys peeling off the front group on the way back.  Our progress on the return seemed to be slowing, I was finding it harder work than I would have liked every time we came to an incline, but was toughing it out. 

I struggled again on the final hill, every time we hit a hill on this race my hamstrings just felt tight.  After running 26:41 last year, 27:18 was not the time I wanted to run and the way I felt throughout the race was not how I wanted to feel.  I came home feeling pretty dejected about my run - even though I promised myself I wouldn't read too much into my performance here ahead of London next week.

If I run like that next week or feel like that next week, that will be a problem.  With me travelling back yesterday, I was forced to do a few things quite a bit differently and maybe it will have had an effect - at least that's what I'm hoping!  I was up at 7am, drove to the airport, had a 3 hour flight, got home at 4pm, went for massage (which I wouldn't normally do the day before a race) and wasn't able to fit a run in and took a rest day (resting the day before a race has never worked for me). 

I've just scrutinised the results and don't quite feel as depressed now as I did on leaving the park.  It seems that for whatever reason the times today weren't quick for whatever reason, I've never seen so few people breaking 27mins which in the grand scheme of things is a very modest time. 

Hopefully, it was the 24 hours leading up to the race that resulted in me not feeling quite right.  Certainly I came back from Portugal very very happy with the way my training had gone out there and was looking forward to next week.  It's only two weeks since I ran a good race at the Wilmslow Half Marathon and that should offer a better indication of my marathon fitness than today.