Trafford Open Meeting (3000m)

I couldn’t possibly line up at the Trials this weekend with my last race an 8:47 3000m so I decided to do another 3000m rather than train.  My biggest problem on Saturday was the erratic lap times, so my gameplan was simply to run as evenly as I could here and I would do that by running my own race. 

Conditions weren’t great – a bit of a breeze.  I set off really casually and found my rhythm very early with a 69sec first lap.  As with most of the open meetings, there were some exuberant starts from some of the younger athletes so this left me well down the field.  I was like a metronome from start to finish with my fastest lap 68secs and my slowest 69secs.  I advanced through the field and with 2 laps to go found myself moving into second place and closing down the gap to race leader Matt O’Dowd.  I had a taste of possibly victory as we hit 550m to go, but then a quick glance backwards from O’Dowd as the gap came down to 5 metres was signal for him to surge forwards and plough onto a well deserved 4 second victory.  I ran a strong last lap with about 5 or 6 athletes breathing down my neck, only losing 2^nd place in the final couple of strides to a fast finishing Sam Atkin.  The two guys who beat me have faster PBs than me so this was a positive performance!

I was going to do a 10min tempo run after the race, and decided on the spur of the moment just to run the B race as well.  This was good fun, with the first two kms at 3:11 sitting off the pace and then a 2:54 last km to stretch the legs out and finish almost 100m clear of the runner up.  I was feeling a lot more positive about Friday now!