Leamington C&AC 10,000m club champs.

Well, once again I seem to have found myself racing on the track - I feel I'm making rather a habit of this!  Like my other recent track races (see blog of 4^th July) I was using this as a training session - more of a tempo run than a race.

For some reason I find it very hard to pace myself on the track - I think it must be a mental thing knowing I've got 25 laps to do.  It's not the distance that bothers me - if I went out and did a 10K road race I would just go out and run hard; I wouldn't be bothered about pacing myself.  But somehow running round and round a track feels different - I've never really been very good at getting my head round it; maybe it's a concentration thing.  That's why I prefer road racing to track!

Anyway, the race went ok - I was first female and 6^th overall, in a time of 37.34.0.  Ok, nowhere near my best, but that wasn't my goal and I'm not training for 10Ks anymore.  I think it's a really good idea to use races as hard training runs as long as you're clear what you want to get out of it and don't always expect a PB. 

I slotted in with a group of the lads at first but, in order not to be running out in lane 2, I soon found myself at the front of the group.  The group then used me as a pacemaker for several laps before surging in front and dropping me.  My pace dropped a bit then as I was running in 'no man's land' but then the group behind, which happened to include my training partner Steve Hundal, caught me.  Two or three times they opened a gap on me but each time I managed to pull them back - I wasn't going to let Steve get the better of me that easily!  I was hanging on to them at the bell and was just a stride or two behind Steve with 100m to go, but he then moved up a gear.  I tried to match him but wasn't quite able to - I blame it on the 30 mile training run 2 days earlier which was still in my legs!  So I was beaten by my training partner by just 4 tenths of a second!  (Well done Steve - impressive turn of speed there!  But I'll be out to get you back next time!).