That said, the race itself is a good one. I first ran it last year and joined the SVHC on the night to become eligible. It was held on 10th June, the day after my birthday, and I ran it in a PB of 21:01. (Marie McChord reminded me last night that it was one of the rare occasions where I had beaten her). Two weeks later I managed to dip below the 21 minute mark, completing the jogscotland 5k in 20:59. This year the race is part of the Run and Become Series and the date had been changed to 30 June, one week after the jogscotland 5k, where I had managed to complete in a clock time of 20:43, chip time 20:42.
After some pre-race chat, a warm up and a drink of Lucozade I lined up near the back of the pack. I should have remembered, from last year, that there was a bit of shuffling for places as the race got underway, however I didn’t and found myself being boxed out and having to run slower than my desired pace. This is not necessarily a bad thing as I and many other runners have a habit of starting too quick. By the time we had completed the first half lap of the estate I had already fell behind the group in front and found myself running alone. I wondered if I had managed to stick with the pack the race would have been easier. However after a lap and a half the ‘pack’ had all but split up and I was concentrating on Susan Addison and Marina McCallum who were a good bit in front of me. There was a guy in a white t-shirt that I was making up ground on and with one lap to go someone shouted to him “C’mon Eddie, catch those two in front of you!” I overtook him then and continued to focus on Susan, I lapped a couple of runners as I dug in deep for the final lap. Someone was chasing after me, I could hear them breathing and knew that it wasn’t Marie. Perhaps it was Eddie? I kept my focus and worked hard, nevertheless with the finish line in sight, I was overtaken by the familiar figure of Kenny McVey (pic) as he sprinted for the finish line a few seconds in front of me. I know Kenny from years ago, when I had one night training with him at Victoria Park AC, I couldn’t keep up with him then and never went back to their training after that, so it was quite pleasing to finish just three seconds behind him. Garmin revealed that I had completed the 5k in a time of 20:41, one second faster than my jogscotland time of the week before and twenty seconds faster than last year! Marie finished some ten seconds later, I had beaten her for only the fifth time but hadn’t even seen her during the run. She and Kenny both commented that they thought I was slowing but had increased my pace in the last lap. This was indeed the case as Garmin revealed that my splits were: 4:01; 4:16; 4:18; 4:19 and 3:47, this compares to: 3:59; 4:12; 4:14; 4:12 and 4:06 the week before.
My official time was a second slower at 20:42, which is still one second faster than last week’s clock time, a Seasonal Best and the third fastest 5k that I have recorded.
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