On a whim I cycled to Joyden Wood (14 miles away) to take part in this great evening race. It’s a 5k off roader through the woods with fair number of nasty little hills and one large doozer of a hill to climb at the end.
I ran quite hard on Monday at Battersea, and covered 13 miles on Tuesday, so what with cycling 14 miles to the race I should have expected it to not be my finest performance. At the start I didn’t really notice many faces about, I saw who’d be 1st and 2nd so I thought I could be in with a shout of a 3rd place…I did see Paul Browning who’s done this race before so gave me the low down on the hills. Shame I ignored him! So off we went. The 1st k was down a really steep section, I hammered it hard, only to then find the course started rising again…. I was in 3rd place, but after the 1st little steep rise my legs went to jelly and I was breathing like I was in the final home stretch. Not good with 3-4k to go… so 3rd drifted to 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th…. I ran the rest of the race with abit more control but on very heavy legs, I couldn’t wait for this one to be over! Come the final doozer of a hill, I let 2 guys go past me, one started falling back as we got into the climb. But one of the good things about the race is a spot prize for every 10th position. So not wanting to let go of 10th place I let the 9th person stay a little ahead of me.
My reward for mediocrity and not getting into a sprint for 9th place, a bottle of wine…. a really nice low key race. (19:30ish 10th ) This was part 1 of a 3 race series with the next one on the 29th of June if anyone wants to join me.
