Salford Harriers 10k

Well, I don't think that I have ever stood at a start line of such accomplished runners in my sporting career as I did at this one. From what I can now tell, this race is a big race in the North West. The record for the course is an astounding 29:33 and there were a few people at the start who were all talking about the low 30's. Still, there seemed to be a good number of runners there so I was hopeful of not making a fool of myself.

The pace at the start of the race seemed high, but I decided not to look at the watch for a while to see how things went. I quickly went through 1, 2 and then 3k and then I decided to have a look at the watch....woops, I had averaged 3:30/km for the last 3k. I knew full well that this would not bode well for the remainder of the race. From that point on, I really struggled to maintain any kind of real pace and every look at the watch confirmed that things were slowing down.

Still, I managed to eventually find a decent couple of runners to sit in with and kind of stayed with them for the last 5k. The course had been described as 'flat', but I now know that this means 'northern flat' i.e., what people like me call undulating. Not exaclty big hills, but gradual rises and drops all the way round.

Eventually crossed the line in 36:57, so not that bad really as that is my second fastest 10k ever. Plus, based on my current amount of running, I am pretty pleased.




Strangely enough, as soon as I finished and the day after, I had no pain at all in the legs - very strange.