Winchester 10k, 2020

Last year's race dawned cold and still, but this morning was mild, windy and squally.  The lovely Mrs S and I got to our usual parking spot in good time and after sitting in the car for a bit hung around the start outside the Guildhall sporting the very latest in binbag chic, chatting to RRR and Hares friends.

Time to put that binbag on!

2000 places had been allocated for this race which seems a bit over-ambitious, but near the startline I didn't get a real sense oof the size of the field. I was next to fellow Romsey runners Alex Prinsep (my old racing rival) and Matt Brown (altogether faster than me), the latter suffering his usual weekend hangover.

We set off, and I was feeling a little sluggish after yesterday's Tring parkrun - Silver Hill felt quite tough and I wondered how today would pan out.  Matt breezed passed me after 1km, as expected, but by now I was starting to get into my stride. At Headbourne Worthy there was a sharp left turn which heralded the startt of a long section heading uphill and into the wind.  I felt fine and gradually reeled in the folk around me.

At some point during the 8th km I realised that I was gaining on Matt. I kept the pressure up, glided past and from there on continually expected him to pull past me.

Ahead of hungover Matt

We were nearing the finish but it took a long time coming. Five marshals in the road pointed me right with some words about right again. There were no marshals at the next junction and I had a moment of doubt before heading right and seeing a runner a hundred metres ahead.

I was just entering Riverside Park when my watched buzzed 10km but there was an awful long way remaining.  I staggered on and on and eventually got to the finish gantry in 39:46, having run 10.71km, although the provisional results say I did it in 39:08 - very odd.

There was a lot of chat at the finish about the long course, and it turned out that the first 130 or so runners had been pointed the wrong way and run an extra 700m. Oops! But I was happy enough, as km for km I was fractionally quicker than last year in tougher conditions, and I felt my pacing had worked well.

Longleat 10k, 2020

This was a bonus race.  We'd entered in for 2019 but it was cancelled due to snow, and had forgotten about it till the race numbers for our deferred entries came through the post.

Mrs S and I collected Jo from Romsey and headed up to Longleat on a mild and dry morning.  The house and safari park were closed, but the place was rammed with cars... we'd no idea it was such a big event.

Outside Longleat House

My mission was to run at a controlled easy pace with my coach, the lovely Mrs S, as part of the countdown towards the Wiltshire 10 next week.  So it was a very different kind of race.  I really think I would have struggled on my own against the temptation to hoof it, but it was beautiful parkland and a very sociable run and fascinating to watch the infinite variety of running styles on other folk.

Halfway through

It was a laugh a minute

The first and final sections were identical 3k laps with a respectable hill up and down with a 1km downward slope to the finish.  Mrs S absolutely nailed it with her first-ever sub-4 minute km and was ecstatic as we crossed the line.

A super morning out. Next stop, Melksham next Sunday and a crack at the 1:00:00 barrier.

Lovely day for it

Thank goodness we avoided the dirty old man