Medway 5k Series Result 

After lasts nights race and time to reflect my overall feeling is: disappointment.

My reason:  This has been one of very few races on the track I have done so I never really knew what to expect. I started off with a group of runners that I know are very good, Paul I know from park run being a strong runner.  My plan was to try and stick with them in the knowledge they will be close to the 19 minute mark. The first few laps actually seemed quite comfortable, I glanced at my watch a few times and saw I was running 5:55 pace, very good for me! This carried on and when I heard my watch beep the mile marker I was pleased to see 5:55 split. The pace I needed for a sub 20 is 6:25 so I thought to myself, I’ve now got 30 seconds in the bank. Just after the beep I was lapped by a phenomenonal kid of 16 running an amazing place, he actually finished in 17:26 I believe. Fantastic.

The second mile beeped on my watch and I saw 6:05, now by my reasonably good maths, I made it 50 seconds up in total. Surely I couldn’t fail to get my target now, I needed to do a 7:16 last mile or less. But to my surprise I continued at relatively the same pace, 6:10 for the next mile and when I saw the last mile beep at 6:15 I knew I’d made it. I don’t get to run on the track often so I was determined to get as good a time as possible so picked up the pace with 200m to go, I overtook someone in the last 100m and we both sprint finished, with me just pipping her on the line. How I have no idea, she was amazing.

Done, race finished, surely I had done it, I felt great the whole race, my calf tightened about lap 8-9 but not enough to impeed me. I looked down at my watch and it hit me……20:16.

What? How? How? Really?

My pace had been good enough for a sub 20 minimum, my splits had been consistently under my target, so what had gone wrong? I stopped my watch and checked – I had just run 5.49k. I’m certain I’d run twelve and a half laps and not thirteen and a half, everyone I ran with stopped so I knew the distance was right.  The group I was running with were bunched up and I found myself running in lane 2 for most of the race, but even that extra distance, over twelve laps doesn’t add up to an extra 500m!  The silver lining in all this is that my Garmin recorded my 5k time as 18:37, this was obviously timing the distance I had run UP TO 5k.  Which obviously means if I had run in a straight line for 5,000 metres I would have done it.

My lessons learned from this race; either try and keep on the inside lane to keep the total distance run shorter or if I am pushed out to lanes 2 & 3, then keep an eye on my total time and NOT my splits.

So it looks like my goal will have to go on to the next race.

 

A short word on the Medway 5k Summer Series.  This has been the first time I have participated and something I would recommend to anyone.  All different levels ran and the atmosphere was very enjoyable.  Medway Council, especially Sarah Dand, put lots of hard work in and it showed, everything was well organised and ran very smoothly.  The marshalls done a great job, I even had my own marshall, Hayley, calling out my remaining laps – thank you!  I will certainly be signing up again next year.