Monday 21 October 2013

Race report: Race 5 in the Innovation Sports 15km series

Innovation Sports have been arranging runs on Clapham Common for a few years. I do the odd one, in fact my 10km PB was set there for quite some time - the first time I broke 50 mins (ran my heart out to creep in at 49:57).

Originally a 10km over three laps they've revamped the course now into a 5km lap. Entries are open to those doing one, two, or three laps. Mrs ran one of the 15km events earlier in the year, I thought it sounded fun and the timing of this one worked well.

The weather did not work well. It was pouring with rain. I suspect about half the field looked out of the window and immediately went back to bed. We nearly did the same. Mrs needed a run before her RRR adventure the next week (more on that later), so we stuck with it.

We were going to jog round gently, but in the first few km she gradually pulled away. I decided early on, whilst slipping and sliding around (much of the course is off-road on grass or mud), to let her go for two laps, then run hard and try and catch her on the third lap.


Not the obvious course to pick if you're after a PB

At the start of lap three I was about 400m behind. As the course was a complicated folded-up star shape I got a regular check of her position. In the first 2km or so I pulled back about 200m, but then just couldn't catch her. I later found out why - firstly, I only ran the first 2km of lap three any faster, I dropped back down after that; secondly, she had got herself in a race for a position and so was also trying to speed up. She was on a mission - I had no chance!

End result: I was 42nd out of 83 finishers in 1:20:36, Mrs was two places in front of me in 1:20:00.

Emergency coffee and rocky road slice in the café and we were done. Off home to warm up, dry off, and throw everything we were wearing straight into the washing machine.

That's twice Mrs has genuinely beaten me now (this was the first time) - I'm going to have to re-double my training efforts!

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