50k World Trophy Final, Assen, Netherlands

Race day dawned bright and sunny and the England team met up in the hotel lobby at 9.15am.  Armed with carrier bags full of our own drinks bottles, gels etc. we made our way over to the start of the race at the newly resurfaced 8-lane athletics track - just a few minutes walk from the hotel!  I love races where you can practically roll out of bed onto the start line without the extra hassle of transportation there.

The race comprised ten laps of a 5km loop, starting and finishing on the athletics track, with a lap of the track on each loop too.  (I knew all those track races I'd recently done would come in handy!!)  The rest of the course was mostly tarmac footpaths but there was also a 600m length of dirt track and an 800m length of uneven brick cobble path to negotiate.  I did a few laps warm up on the track and soon it was time to line up for the start.

We set off and I found myself running alongside my England team mate, Emma Gooderham, with all the other women behind us.  I had a strict pace schedule to stick to in order that I (hopefully) didn't completely wreck my legs before the World & European 100k champs. in three weeks time.  This meant, though, that when Emma started to pull away from me after the first few kilometres I had to hold back rather than try and race her.  I have to say, this was extremely difficult being a competitive person, but at least it meant I could practice pace discipline which I'll need in the 100k.

After the first couple of laps or so everyone became quite spread out and I found myself running on my own.  I thought then that it would be a long and boring journey for ten laps.  However, after about the third lap I started lapping one or two of the slower runners in the open race being held in conjunction with the international race.  Then, out of the blue, another of the British runners, Jo Zakrzewski, came past me.  I was a little surprised at this as Jo had told me what pace she was intending to run at, but it was really good to have her for company.  She had caught me up to let me know that a Japanese runner was trying to chase me down!!  Jo and I ran several laps together and as the race went on there were also more people to lap. 

A large part of each lap took us through woodland and the shade this provided was a welcome relief from the warm sun.  We also had fantastic support from spectators and all the marshals around the course - they had looked our names up in the programme and were cheering for us by name (albeit some rather odd pronunciations!).  Jo and I also had a 'Britannia rules the waves' shouted at us at one point!!  One of the advantages of a lap course is that the marshals were there to shout for us on each lap, and also my coach, Les, was able to see me loads of times.  He kept popping up all over the place!  One of the disadvantages was that we could hear the man commentating over the loudspeaker the whole way round each lap!  At least this meant I could tell where the others were, though!  He was great as every time we went through the 5km point he announced what time we were on course for if we kept up a steady pace.

On each lap we also saw our team management at the track where they handed us our drinks and gels.  As usual I was using Shotz energy gels, which once again seemed to do the trick in keeping my energy levels topped up.  I find them really easy to swallow and I also really like the variety of flavours - it means I never get fed up of having the same thing throughout the whole race. 

Part way round the 8^th lap I pulled in front of Jo to overtake some lapped runners but then found myself drifting away from Jo too.  I tried to stick to my planned pace schedule - I was just slightly up on it at this point.  I was feeling really good and pretty relaxed when all of a sudden, with about 2 laps to go, I suddenly felt the pain of a blister on the side of my big toe.  I remember once being told that the worst part of a blister is the initial pain, so I tried to ignore it and carry on running.  Sure enough, after a while the pain the subsided a little.  Thereafter I just kept running, determined not to let anyone pass me to take the silver medal away from me.  As I ran onto the track for the last time I couldn't resist picking up my pace a bit, and tried to run the last 300m feeling like a track athlete!  I crossed the line as second lady in 3hrs 25.05 (21^st position overall).

I was slightly disappointed not to have retained my title but also really pleased with my silver medal, especially as I hadn't been able to race flat out.  I have to say, though, it was a bit frustrating not to be able to try and race Emma, but all credit to her - she had a fabulous race and ran a huge PB.  It was doubly frustrating that my silver medal winning time would have won me the gold medal in all the previous occasions this race has been run!!

For those interested in stats, my 5km splits are as follows (the first one is a bit longer to make up the distance as the laps were very slightly under 5km).

20:46, 20:12, 20:24, 20:34, 20:27, 20:27, 20:43, 20:39, 20:45, 20:15

I'll post a blog about the whole trip soon.