Netley 10k, 2017

Another week, another 10k. After a quick but technically suboptimal outing at Lymington last week, I wanted to try a deliberately slower start and see if I could get the pacing thing right.

It was a warm morning and there were a load of people at Royal Victoria Country Park, home of the first RR10 of the season. This being an HRRL event, there was a high count of club runners and plenty of familiar faces.

Come the start, and I found myself in a crush of runners of varying speeds. Given my start-slow mantra, I was OK with this.  The first k took 4 minutes, and then the second k, mostly downhill, was considerably quicker. Before I knew it, I was checking my watch every time I thought of it and obsessing about lap times.  This really isn't the point of racing.

It was a three-lap course. On each successive lap I found the hills (except they weren't hills, not really) getting steeper, and I really struggled through the last 2km or so. The final slog around three sides of a playing field was a rather miserable trudge. I limped over the line in a chip time of 38:36.

How did it come to this, after such good intentions? I think I got bored with the laps, I forgot to enjoy the race... but as the lovely Mrs S (who knocked a minute off her best in a blinder) reminded me, I'd run a quick-ish parkrun the day before.  Schoolboy error, said Peat the next day, and he was right.

Hey ho, all good learning.  Next stop, back to green fields and steep hills for the Hoppit Half in June.