Sunday 26 January 2014

Brass Monkey 10K

The first leg of my #2014_10kChallenge at Rockingham Speedway the Brass Monkey 10k was a tough one, hopefully the toughest of the year.  The weather was appalling, hard driving rain and wind swirling around the race track certainly made for character building stuff.

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm way off my fitness levels of when I ran the Cardiff Half Marathon in 2012.  Currently almost 2 stone heavier and over a minute per mile slower, I'm making steady progress towards my 'former glory'.

I arrived in good time to collect my race number from the pitlane of the Rockingham Speedway circuit.  There was a good turnout considering the awful conditions.  In fact it was a record attendance for this fundraising event for Lakelands Hospice in Corby.

Lots of runners huddled in the pits under cover waiting until the last possible moment before heading out to the track, there was almost a groan when the announcer announced it was time to go outside to the start line.

Credit to the organisers, they didn't hang around getting us off, as soon as everyone was on the start line they had us away.

4.5 laps of the track lay ahead as we almost immediately hit the headwind on the start/finish straight.  50% of this race was going to be spent fighting against this wind and driving rain, the other 50% was recovery time...

I kept a steady pace throughout without being dragged into other peoples race, I was conscious I needed to do my own thing as I can ill afford to waste any energy with my current fitness levels.  My 1st mile was 8:37 which was my pace in my 'prime' (I use that term very lightly) followed by 3 miles at 9:20 each.  5th mile took a hit at 9:38, before running 9:20 pace for the last 1.2 miles. 

An official race time of 57:25, 6 minutes off my PB is not great, but given the condition of the weather and myself I'll let that go, I'm sure there's a PB in me this year, after all I have another 11 attempts at it...