Well it just goes to show that if you put your mind to something you can surprise even yourself. When I signed us up for the British 10k I put my expected time down as 90 mins (I was 2 weeks into Couch to 5k at the time), prior to yesterday’s race was thinking that I would be really happy if I could finish in 80 mins but expecting to come in around 85. Fast forward to the finish and my official time was 71:17! I’m super stoked and now thinking I need to aim for sub 70 in my next race.Â
So what was the British 10k like? Well based on the posts on their Facebook page (and the mutterings I was hearing yesterday), it’s not the most organized of races, especially for the cost of entry (£50). The Boyf & I seem to be the lucky ones who got the official t-shirts, but from the sound of it many didn’t (and many didn’t even get their bibs etc. pre-delivered despite registering in plenty of time. The start was a farce, we were there super early but they allowed people to queue hop and push in at the front of the queue, meaning we didn’t get passed the start until 10:15 (the race started about 15mins late as well). The Boyf & I also received our official race times by text but they were supposed to be live on the site at 12:00 today, it seems that they won’t be though. Facebook is now saying tomorrow, not great for those that haven’t had a text yet and so don’t know how they did. The weather was steaming hot, so the delayed start wasn’t that helpful, but once we got going it was OK (plenty of dousing at the water stations to keep cool). It was a shame that they hadn’t used the holding pen to split people into timed waves though. Even I was finding it a struggle dodging the walkers who spread out across the road rather than sticking to the side, but I really felt for The Boyf as he was hoping to post a time near to 45 mins and in the end due to walker traffic came in at 49:17. At least from the race feedback online we can see that lots of others suffered from this too. From a personal perspective I varied from my planned run 10 mins, walk 1 min and ran the first 15 and then settled in to a 5:30ish split. It obviously worked as I held on despite the heat and finished well ahead of my planned time. It was disappointing that they seemed to have varied the course slightly as what was expected to be a quick loop round Parliament Square was extended to a lengthy out and back section which made it hard to know when to really push for the line, in the end I waited until I could see the finish. The crowd were great and I felt encouraged the whole way round but the overall experience was marred by the poor organization. Listening to other runners this was a poor example though so I am hoping other races will be slightly slicker. On the plus side we raised £200 for KCL & Macmillan and are looking forward to raising more over the coming months