London Vitality 10k, 2019

It was an early start to catch the 0730 train from Basingstoke to Waterloo.  The lovely Mrs S and I collected Ali and Jo (of the Hampshire Hares) in Romsey and an hour or so later were walking through Trafalgar Square and up The Mall as teams were busy assembling roadside barriers.  We should have had Neil Hare with us too, but he'd caught a later train.

Outside Buck Pal

I think we'd all underestimated the size and scale of this race. 23,500 runners on a single 10k route - it was massive.  There were about 6 waves, and I was in wave 1.  I stripped down, stashed my bag and did a few warm ups, to the general mirth of the ladies.

Shooing the chickens

I had a cold coming on, having woken a couple of nights earlier with that unmistakable back-of-throat feeling.  Reluctantly, I acknowledged that blasting around the course wouldn't be terribly sensible.  Mrs S gave me the idea of running it to a consistent pace.  Brilliant, I thought - I'll try to do precisely 4:00 min/km pace and finish in 40:00.

Waiting at the start, it was a nice surprise to bump into Jamie Foster of Itchen Spitfires.  He was also expecting to go steady after a recent injury.  The elites turned up (there was a very impressive GB lineup, including Mo Farah), the wheelchair runners set off, and then it was our turn.

There were a few runner congestion challenges in the initial minutes, but not as bad as I'd anticipated.  I spent much of the first km looking at my watch and clocked 4:00 min/km exactly.  But I quickly got fed up with this game - I didn't want to be staring at a small screen the whole time - so I abandoned this tactic and instead kept my exertion level a few notches below ordinary race pace; it was more of a tempo run. It was cracking to be running around central London, joining together locations and views and getting a better sense of the geography of this place.  I have a strong affinity with London and all its history and it was great to be part of it and running sufficiently below threshold to be able to pay attention.

I caught up with Jamie in the second half, and had a bizarre political argument about Theresa May with some guy as we ran past Downing Street.  Good riddance to a useless leader who'd made a right hash of everything, or sympathy for a PM who gave everything she had in am impossible situation?  After a couple of exchanges (which the other guy started) we abandoned the argument, which was probably just as well.

I enjoyed cruising up Birdcage Walk, remembering the exhaustion of marathons at this point.  I crossed the line in 39:02 gun time and 38:38 chip time, which was as quick as I dared go.  I would have loved to have been able to push hard for a sub-37 on this flat course, but this wasn't going to happen today.

The Hares all met up, tired and happy, in St James's Park.  Mrs S was thrilled that she'd knocked over 2 minutes off her PB.

The Famous Five

This isn't the kind of race that we'd choose to do very often, with all the corporate plastic flimflam that tends to accompany them, but we all had a smashing day out.