Hyde Park 5k

The people that went to Kenya were told to race as soon as they came back. I maybe took it to the extreme by racing the next day but I was eager to test myself after a good block of training. We got there a bit later than planned but still had time to warm up and get the usual routine done. However I don’t think a warm up made any difference, it was absolutely freezing!! I don’t think I’ve ever felt so cold in my life, even when it snows. Anyway I started the race and fellow club mate Richard Ward went tearing off so I decided to go flying off with him.

After a few minutes I was by myself but my chest was really tight. This was unusual for me as that normally doesn’t happen. Anyway I remembered this was a hard effort so I just tried to keep pushing as hard as I could the whole way. I was doing things like accelerating off every corner, trying to constantly make my stride longer and just killing myself in general. I remember going through 2k in 6 mins but I don’t remember the 4k split. I do however remember wanting the race to end as soon as possible because my chest was in a world of pain.

I eventually crossed the line in 14:53 with my chest really, really tight. Then for the next 20 mins I felt like I was struggling to breathe and the pain in my chest didn’t disappear. It was really strange as I’ve never had breathing problems so couldn’t understand why there was an issue. The general consensus was that coming back to cold weather and all of a sudden breathing in large amounts of very cold air was not what my body wanted.

But the race itself wasn’t too bad. It was freezing cold, I could barely breathe, I had done 12 hours of travelling the day before and I went through 2k in 15 minute pace so somewhere along the race I managed to negative split. Also Steve spoke to Kevin Quinn and he ran there then went to Armagh and ran 20-30s quicker. It was also surprisingly hilly and not as fast as I thought it would be. To be honest as it was central London I was expecting a flat course but the inclines were quite steep and demanding. There were also quite a few twists and turns which can hinder you. But I would say it’s quite a good course and if I have a spare Friday at any point I would like to go back there and run.