Week in Review: 6 - 12 Jun '16

Some precarious balancing was needed this week. Working in London on Wednesday and Thursday and racing on Sunday meant a little tweaking of my planned training was in order so that a) I could get in the planned training and b) not kill myself so much that it would severely affect my race on Sunday.

As it turned out, I think I did a pretty good job and ended the week only 4km short of the original planned approximate distance. Instead of a shortish run on Tuesday, I extended it to take up some of the longer run that was scheduled for Sunday. Wednesday was shorter than planned, but Thursday and Friday slightly longer. Sunday I padded the 10k race with a 5k warm up and a 6k cooldown, all three in the rain.

The race on Sunday went pretty well too. I wasn't sure how much of an effect running nearly 100k for the week up to the start of the race would have on the race itself, but it seems not too much. It was a rainy and slightly breezy day and I'd hopped for another sub-37 min 10k, but that wasn't to be in the end… by 3 seconds.

I know the route very well so knew to hold things back for the first 4k - the biggest hill is between 3k and 4.5k - and then let loose on the second half. In retrospect I think I may have held back just a little too much as I went through half way in about 19 mins and then finished the second half nearly a whole minute quicker. It's great to have a negative split, but I think nearly a minute is probably a bit much on a 10k.

Anyway, I felt pretty good on the second half of the race, and like in the Yateley 10k, managed to pick up my pace and hold it pretty well, despite the little undulations, though ran out of steam a bit as I entered the field to finish the race… my body really didn't want to run on the wet grass as fast as I'd have liked it to.

In the end I finished in 9th place in a gun time of 37:05 and a chip time of 37:02. Not too disappointing at all.

This week is going to be a big week with the Bracknell Forest 5 Mile offroad race on Wednesday and a lot of mileage. Plan to cut down on the beers this week too to help cope with the increase and also because I'll be in Singapore next week for work and those do's tend to have a few beers involved.