Run Preston 5k : Race date : 25/09/2016

So once again I wakes up at 5 in the morning all excited and simply unable to get back to sleep. I am finding that this is now standard practice come the dawn of an event. Don’t get me wrong, I love that excited feeling I get in the pit of my stomach on race day. long may it continue.

This morning’s 5 am dilemma was race strategy.

Do I go for it or do I play it safe?

My heart wanted to go for it, my head said don’t be ridiculous you have got a marathon next week, all your training has been distance focused not speed focused, and the last thing you want to do is get injured the week before your first ever marathon chasing a level 3 PB.

Nontheless I finds myself googling last years results at 5 in the morning?

Let’s just pause for a second here.

It wasn’t long ago that I was buzzing about being able to complete a 5k race and not come last. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with coming last, some of the most inspirational  stories you will find are from the people that cross the finish line at the back of the pack and  I am the first to applaud them, their tales inspire me more than you know, but we are each on our own journey.

My whole book is based on how to complete level 1 from scratch and then move from one level to the next should you choose to do so.

It is based on the  elation and massive sense of achievement you will feel in completing each race and collecting the medal. If you have never ran a 5k before then completing the race, is, in itself,  a fantastic achievement – it will give you such a wonderful feeling and one that will stay with you for ages,

I have not forgotten that feeling, nor will  I…. Ever……it’s why I  wrote the book!

I am finding though, as I move up the levels, that when I drop back down, I feel like a lion….And I like feeling like a lion.

Case in point – yesterday, I did a 20k training run for the marathon next week,  dropping down to a 5k today and I’m like, not being funny, but at 5k I’m just about warming up,…..piece of cake….let’s have it…..

A marker of how far I have come on my journey I suppose, I repeat, it wasn’t long ago that I was buzzing about the fact that I could ‘just get round’ and complete a 5k race –  doing so was beyond my wildest dreams at the time …

But now I find myself unintentionally tasting a very different world of racing to compete and like a vampire with blood once you taste it…. that’s it….

I have also got one eye on what I am going to do after the Ironman and I am fairly certain I will drop down and start trying to compete properly at a lower level. To be in with a chance of winning a sprint tri the run needs to be around the 20 minute mark which I have previously been nowhere near as that’s a good 10 minutes off my regular time, so I wanted to use this race as a marker for where I am at.

Anyhow I sets off in plenty of time leaving the house at 7.30 for a 9am race start.

As is customary the top was down and the tunes were belting out on the way in.

I remember thinking its 7.30 on a Sunday morning, the old me would be nursing a hangover right now, or worst still, just getting in, but now I am on a very different road.

I was buzzing on the drive in to Preston and just felt so alive.

I arrives at the market multi storey car park at 8am, it’s pay and display so make sure you take plenty of change, £2 for 2 hours, rude for a Sunday really but I didn’t mind because the great thing about this race is that registration / start is literally at the bottom of the car park stairs.

I could hear the music pumping out as  I makes my way down the steps.

Upon exiting the doors of the car park I was initially quite impressed with what I saw.

There was a very official looking start/finish line right in the town centre complete with timing scoreboard and crush barriers lined the full length of the start finish boulevard,…maybe they were expecting a bigger crowd than what I had first thought.

I could see the registration desks under the market canopy so I makes my way over, pleased to observe plenty of staff on hand and no queue, race packs were neatly organised alphabetically and it took no more than a few seconds for the friendly lady to locate mine.

I politely declined the offer of free safety pins in favour of my race belt.

I was given an envelope with my name on it and inside was my race number and nothing else. There was not the usual bumf of leaflets et el that you often find in race packs but really what more do you need?

I was pleased to observe that the race number had a timing chip on the back of it -chip timing! excellent!

I was all sorted with a good 50 minutes before race start so headed into the town centre to grab a coffee and visit the loo.

As I am walking back to registration  I can hear  the music pumping out, it was my sort of music, dance tunes.

As I got closer I became aware of  a guy who was clearly on his way home from the night before, having a one man rave, right next to the speakers.

I loved that guy,  I am not sure who was having the most fun, him or us……..

Some people were laughing at him however  I was tempted to join in with him….

It wasn’t many moons ago that I was the one walking home from the night before at 7am , but here I am, now on a very different path, fresh as a daisy, and ready to push for a PB in a 5k run.

Another marker I suppose of how my life has changed in more ways than I ever imagined since this crazy journey began.

From there I just milled around registration and took some photos, chatted with a few of the other athletes.

Before long a guy pulled up at registration on a road bike and I asked him if he was going  to run as I was well impressed that he had cycled down to race start but it turned out he was the pacer dude.

Race start always seems to creep up on me, I go from feeling like I have got ages to all of a sudden everyone is lining up, too busy chatting as always….

Couple of minutes to go and I have still got my hoodie and my trackie bottoms on so I whipped em off (tri suit underneath) and handed them into baggage drop , thankfully there was no queue.

I took a quick photo of race start and then joined the  pack.

I reckon there was a good 250 at the start line, (323 to be precise) I muscled in and started jumping up and down trying to warm up. At first I went near the front, and then I changed my mind. I had observed that last year they ranked athletes on chip time, so on this basis I opted to stick with tradition and went to the very back of the pack.

I had made my decision regarding race strategy…… I was going to go for it.

Upon arrival at the back a couple of lads looked me up and down and said “shouldn’t you be at the front?” which I was quite flattered about to be honest… thanks guys! this only served to pour oil on my fire. We chatted as there was a slight delay but before long the ‘holding’ vehicle moved forward and the crowd started to surge round to the start line.

The announcer counted us down to zero at which point I let out my trademark scream of ‘Coooommmmeee Onnnnn!’ and waited for the reaction of the other athletes, as always it’s one of 3:

1. They will join in
2. The will Turn round and smile at me
3. They will look at me as if I am a psycho

The reaction in Preston was mainly 2) above, so I shouted for them to join in but they just repeated 2) above which is totally cool with me!.

We sets off and it felt like it took ages to cross the timing mat but in reality it took less than a minute. I looked around and I was right at the very back of the pack.

There was a  fair bit of congestion at the start and it took a while for everyone to get moving.

You kind of wind your way out of the town centre which was fairly narrow in parts as it was fenced off by the crush barriers. Within the first few minutes I pretty much wrote off any stupid ideas I had of giving last years winner a run for his money as there was just too much congestion, if you want to compete for one of the top spots you need be at the front really to get a clear run,, not that I ever stood a chance mind, the winner turned out to be Mo Farrah in disguise.

Writing off any ridiculous ideas I had of winning the thing helped settle me down and calm my early pace, I was now satisfied with trying to beat my previous PB  of 30 minutes, which is consistenty my 5k time in training, albeit on longer runs.

Very early on the route opens out to a nice wide  road and it’s all downhill for quite a way. The people around me where holding back but I did the exact opposite and let myself go, I overtook a lot of people on this section.

The route is then flat for a while, again I let myself off the leash for this, one athlete had warned me in our pre race chat that the course changes to steep hill climbs towards the end and I knew this would come to bite me on the arse, but I will worry about that later, right now I was having fun overtaking.

I got into an early dual with one guy which was great fun and we passed a fair chunk of the field between us.

The route then goes off road and into the park, thankfully the path through the park is tarmac, slightly up and down but nothing too major, however it is a bit on the narrow side so overtaking was a little challenging although I found that the other athletes  would politely move over and let you past which I very much appreciated.

It felt like I was running through the park for quite a while, its very beautiful with waterfalls and big limestone tunnels, so I enjoyed the lovely backdrop as I made my way along.

I have decided that I need to invest in a decent watch that tells me how far I have ran. I hate not knowing when racing and there were no distance markers at this event.

Around 3k ish? We seemed to head out of the park and then ran along the river for a while, again it was a much appreciated concrete path.. by this point the bunches of the mass runners seemed to disappear and the field had become quite stretched, this always seems to happen to me!

There was a big gap to the guys in front or so I thought but it turned out that this was the runners on the other side of the river who were now well behind me and it took my breath away how many I had overtaken, the line seemed to go on for ages!

When I see this I get the most weird surreal feeling, out of body looking down almost,  like it’s not really happening and i’m just dreaming.

I was still feeling strong but I was aware that I was pushing it far harder than I have ever done.

I passed a guy who had started to walk, so I threw an energy gel at him, hope it helped and that he wasn’t injured. (not by the gel, you must understand, when I say I threw it at him, I don’t mean literally)

I then started asking every marshall I passed how many runners were in front of me with mixed responses…..

The first one said ‘sorry I haven’t been counting’ …..

The next one said ‘what?’ 3 times before going out of earshot…

The final one said  ‘quite a lot’…. at which point I didn’t think I was doing very well.

We then re-entered the park with the field now very spaced out and  I tried my luck one last time with another marshall……..

‘how many in front mate?’I asked him,

‘about 50’ he said, which I was over the moon with,

‘no wait…. make that 30’ he shouted!!

I was starting to run out of juice but this news was just the energy shot I needed….30? from 300? no way?

Up ahead I could see the killer hill that the guy had warned me about before the race and it looked a beauty. naughty putting that towards the end of the course but I like the thinking of the organisers.

There was no doubt in my mind what was happening with that hill- it was getting walked up! and walk indeed I did.

We were then back in the outskirts of the town centre and running on closed roads,which I Iove.

I overtook a couople more before a welcome down section and could  make out the muffled noise of the crowd on the home straight.

Just before you get to the finish there is one last slight climb which is fairly testing given it’s location but a spectator shouted ‘one last push and then your done’ to me.

I don’t know if people are aware of the effect that their words have but saying something like that really pushes me on and its like somoeone giving you a pair of fresh legs..

I powered up that hill thanks to him and before I knew it I was on the finish esplanade.

A large crowd had gathered  against the crush barriers which seemed to go on for ages, they were all clapping and I made sure I clapped every one of them as I really appreciated their support.

The scoreboard displayed 23:57 and my watch said 23:14,so I had once again smashed my PB and felt sure I had ran a decent race.

It transpires I ranked # 30 out of 323 which I am so over the moon about I can’t begin to tell you. You must understand that until fairly recently just being able to get round a 5k without collapsing  was so far out of my reality I barely believed it could be possible, so 30 out of 323 and i’m like……. what?…is this really happening? lol!

Also I am not training to race at present I am training for distance, in my opinion the two are very different animals, but I wanted to see where I am at, and there was my answer.

It’s becoming obvious to me that all the fun is in these shorter races.

At the finish line I got presented with a kiss!, a medal, which I really like, it’s one of my favourites, a banana and a bottle of water which I much appreciated.

This event had everything you could want really. It was cheap to enter, £14 if I remember right, plenty of parking right at race start, lots of helpful friendly staff at registration, race number waiting for you on arrival, secure baggage area,  music pumping, announcer on the mike, a marshall on every turn, , closed roads, decent turnout, friendly athletes, chip timing, great crowd lining the streets at the finish, fairly flat course 98% tarmac, nice medal, fast online results….., PB……, free banana………, kiss!!…….., what more do you want?

I clapped some of the other runners over the line, went and collected my clothes and starts making my way back to the car.

‘What do you do with this?’ one lad said to me showing me his race number (and meaning do we need to hand the timing chip in?)  – ‘keep it as a souvineer’ I replied.

We chit chatted on the way back to the car and It turned out he finished in 20:02 so was easily top 10.

“Do you race other distances or are you a 5k specialist?” I asked him…

“I stick to 5k’s only” he replied.

Do you indeed….. I thought to myself….

That’s very interesting….

Very interesting indeed….

I will See you next year, my friend…….

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