I got up at 8.30am, dressed in my running gear and ate my usual pre-race breakfast of porridge and a banana washed down with a coffee.
I was travelling to Morecambe with a friend and we were meeting a group from our running club there.
We left our home town of Kendal at 9.30am to travel the 26 miles to The Race Head Quarters situated at the Superbowl in Morecambe.
We left Kendal in torrential rain and high winds and I was not looking forward to running along the prom battling the elements!
The drive down the motorway wasn't very pleasant as there was so much spray and lying water on the roads but just as we were arriving into Morecambe at just after 10am the rain stopped and a little bit of blue sky tried to make an appearance! I started to feel a little bit more positive.
We got parked easily in a nearby car park and then headed straight to collect our race numbers. There was no queue and we were very quickly ready to go!
We went to the toilet and then met up with the rest of our group. By now it was around 10.30am and we were ready for the 11am start.
We stayed around the registration area trying to stay warm, then at around 10.50am we headed across the road to the Prom where the start of the race was.
Although the rain had stopped there was still a strong wind which was going to make the run harder than it needed to be!
At just before 11am the man with the loud speaker asked everyone to approach the start line.
Although this race was advertised as being chip timed it wasn't! I tried to position myself as close to the front as possible without risking getting bowled over by the super speedy ones!
At exactly 11am we were off - straight into a head wind!
The race started off going along the promenade for the first 1.5 miles, and unbelievably the first water station was at the end of the prom which seemed very early to me, however, the wind had taken it out of me so I was pleased to have a slurp of water to try and revive myself before pushing on!
The race went along the prom into Heysham before looping back, all on roads open to traffic, however, there were plenty Marshall's positioned at all the roads we had to cross so it wasn't an issue for me.
Although the organisers were advertising the run as fast and flat I still managed to feel a few hills and I remembered thinking the last time I ran this race that it wasn't as flat as I had expected!
Despite it being windy it was still fairly warm and humid and there wasn't another water station.
By the 4 mile mark I was desperately ready for another!
The last mile and a half took us back along the seafront and I knew the end was in sight! The seabreeze was still there, but as sods law would have it it was STILL blowing against me – I was expecting to be blown home!
The last stretch was a long straight flat finish with sprint potential – glancing at my Garmin I realised I had lost quite a bit of time and tried to push myself for this last part but the legs weren’t willing! There was another runner sitting on my shoulder and i tried to hold him off for as long as i could but eventually he managed to get past me and crossed the line just ahead of me!
There wasn’t much encouragement in the way of spectators around the course and I missed this compared with the bigger events.
I crossed the finish line and stopped my Garmin and was pleased to see that despite it feeling hard work that i had still managed a sub 50! My official time was 49 minutes 47 seconds, which isn't a 10K PB but it was a course PB, the last twice I have finished this race in 54:40 and 53:26.
I was handed a fantastic very large medal, a chocolate biscuit and a bottle of water.
I immediately headed back towards the finish line to give support and encouragement to the others in my group!
Afterwards we headed into the coffee shop in The Midland Hotel and enjoyed a well deserved coffee and biscuit.
All in all it was a good race, I am just disappointed that it was so windy as I had been hoping to get a PB! You can view the route and my race here! I was delighted to see that i was actually 99th out of 271 runners! The Results can be viewed here!
No comments:
Post a Comment