Technically I was 5th place but thankfully 2 of the 4 people ahead were female, and a lot faster than me!
It's a pretty low key 10k, the main event of the day is the half marathon but I wanted to see where I was at for 10 km's so with it being right on my door step, the social club at work were giving entry out for free, it was a bit of a no-brainer.
Rocked up to the start fresh from finally changing the exhaust on my car all morning (yes it took that long). Didn't realize the time go by and by the time I had the last bolt tightened I looked down at the watch and it was 9:22! Race was starting in 23mins! Ran into the house, grabbed HR monitor, garmin, house key and changed into running gear and then ran out the door and did my (very fast) warm up to try get down to the start of the race in time. I arrived down with literally 60 secs to start, just enough time for the Garmin to find signal. Still panting from trying get down on time the gun went and off we went.
I was in about 10th position for the first few 100 or so meters and worked my way up and into what felt like a comfortable pace. Within the first 1km I was in 4th place overall. It continued like that until about the 4km mark when the 2nd female went passed me like I was stopped, so that left me in 5th place (3rd place male) and there I stayed for the rest of the race.
It's a pity I don't have splits, I forgot to use the lap button on the Garmin but I definitely went out way too quick, I think the first 1km was in or around 3:19 min/km.
As we rounded the driving range at the 4.5km mark and faced for home, it came as a bit of a shock that we had the un-noticed advantage of the breeze for the first half, this spelled disaster for the return journey and did everything I could to keep some sort of form and concentrate. There was no one around me at this point so it was tough to stay focused. I thought I kept hearing footsteps behind me and by the 8km mark I was getting quite fond of my 3rd place finish and wanted it to keep it that way! Out along the mutton island route you do a full 180 degree turn and you get to see who and how far people were behind you. The two chasing runners were too close for comfort with 1.5km to go so I tried upping the pace and did manage to hold them off to finish and claim my 3rd place male prize!
Officially finished in 36:56, a country mile off my target of under 36mins. Obviously I need to do a lot more 10km focused training to get next or near McMillan's 35:31 prediction of my 5km time. I've being doing more hard sessions recently than I have in a long time so possibly takes time to reap the benefit of the sessions. Fingers crossed it'll come good for the XC next weekend.
On a side note, I wore the HR monitor. My estimated max HR for my age off of using the common 220-(your age) formula is completely wrong. This should put me with a max HR of 192 bpm. During the 10 km I averaged 193! This messes up all my plans on having different paces based on HR zones so I'd better do a full on max HR test some day soon. The max I reached today was 200 bpm so I'm at least over 200 bpm and thats all I know for now.
10km in 36:55 (3:37's) HR avg. 193!
