Sitting on the plane to Basel a couple of weeks ago I was reading through the race listing in Runner’s World and spotted a nice little 10 Miler that meant we could combine some running with a family visit for Easter and a parkrun! What could be better? So I signed us up, got The Boyf to pack our running kit and when I arrived home we hopped in the car and drove south for the Folkestone 10 Miler, billed as a flat, fast, PB possible course.
I decided to use the race to test the science of run/walk strategy and planned to run 800m at apx 5:30 pace and then walk the remaining 200m. It turns out that I got my pre-race maths wrong and my walk pace was slower than I expected but all in all it seemed like a good plan. We arrived in plenty of time and I met up with “Twitter friend” @diamondlitefoot James Surname (#nothisrealsurname) and then bumped into Jo (@JoFWise) at the start. She commented that I should be further up the start bin, but she obviously stalks my times less that I do hers as I was confident that she would beat me even if she wasn’t!
So off we went….the course was as billed a potential PB course, there was a bit of hillage at the far end but overall the course was flat and fast. In fact so fast that The Boyf surprised me by passing me on his way back while I was only at the 6km point, meaning he’d run about 10km in super-speedy time. The run/walk strategy meant I treated this very much as in interval session pushing myself hard in the sprints and then relaxing in the recovery periods and this meant that I was feeling fairly strong right till the end. I don’t think it’s the way to go for short races like a 10km but definitely a viable option for half/full marathons….I will keep testing it anyway.
The maple pecan pastry The Boyf had for breakfast in the hotel obviously had super powers as he finished quicker than he had expected in 1:07:58 (66th place) with me coming in fuelled by bacon, eggs (and Sport Beans) in 404th place and 1:42:31. Good Friday really was!
Saturday dawned and parkrunday was here, this was to be our first visit to Maidstone and I was looking forward to playing tourist on their out & back, riverside course. Starting at the Kent Life museum/park we were greeted by donkeys and alpacas. Jo seemed in good form after her 10 miler the previous day and although The Boyf and I both intended on taking things fairly easy we soon got caught up in the parkrun excitement and finished strongly. The Boyf was 13th with 20:49 and I finished in 167th in 31:31 not bad with heavy legs from the day before. We’ll definitely go back to Maidstone for another visit as it’s quite a fast course, although you do need to be careful on your start positioning as the route is quite narrow with minimal passing opportunities unless you really accelerate.