Nos Galan 5k

Back in September when I ran the Cardiff 10k, Jacqui Brace from Welsh Athletics was telling the North team about this event and challenged us to an unofficial Wales vs North Inter-area match.  Mick Hill, our team manager at Cardiff, thought it was a great idea and accepted the challenge!

October quickly came around, and we still didn’t have any plans for New Year so when Mick asked us again we agreed to do it. 

Myself, Joe Bailey and Ben Riddell travelled down together and our hopes of giving the Welsh a run for their money were severely dented when Joe decided on the way down that his injury hadn’t cleared up 100% and made a decision not to run.

Our preparation for this was very low key and we stopped at a pub in Birmingham en route and had a pub meal of burger and chips – not a meal I would ever choose before a serious race! 

After checking into our hotel, we met the rest of the North guys and travelled in convoy to the park and ride.  A short bus journey later and we arrived in the village of Aberdare.  You could quickly see this was going to be something special with huge crowds lining the town centre and the guy on the tannoy making announcements about the upcoming firework display. 

We warmed up and the fireworks got underway as we were finalising our preparations.  This was perhaps the most impressive firework display I have ever seen, it went on for almost 20 minutes and the fireworks were so powerful that they were setting car alarms off!!

The race started on a very narrow street with a large elite field huddled under a start gantry.  I was very worried about falling down!  I managed to get out well and ran the first 100m a lot faster than I normally would as I was so worried about falling.  The next 500m was a bit crazy with around 30-35 runners jostling for position before turning round a traffic cone.  It had seemed a lot further away when I warmed up and when we got to the cone, it felt like I was stood still for 10 seconds and lost 20 places!  After that, I was slowly picking runners off for the rest of the race.  I could always see the leaders about 100m in front – the gap didn’t seem to change at all between 1km and 3km and then came down a little between 3km and 4km before they decided to race it out. 

The race was won for a second successive year by track specialist Richard Peters in just outside 14:40.  I had a great battle with fellow marathon man Richie Gardiner and Chris Busaileh (who had beaten me by 4secs in my great run at Ribble Valley just 4 days earlier) on the last lap just dipping under 15:10.  I finished strongly and felt afterwards I could have ran another 5k at that pace!  It’s a bit short for me at the moment and probably wasn’t as good as my Ribble result but a solid run nonetheless.

I would fully recommend this event to anybody, it is well organised, very hospitable and there is a real atmosphere to the event.