Clock Change Challenge, 2022

A beautiful spring day, and the lovely Mrs S and I set off early to Calne in north Wiltshire for a new 10k race, part of the Wiltshire Road Race League and advertised as flat and therefore recovering-ankle-friendly.

It was a friendly, low-key event, with 5k and fun runs going on as we arrived. Very different to last week's Eastleigh run. I found myself near the start line and had a chat with a couple of Corsham runners, and we were off. In retrospect, I was less disciplined about tempering my pace at the start than I was last week, figuring that there would be less pressure in a smaller event, and as a result I clocked the first km in 3:37, a bit quick.

A quick lap of the playing field at the start

The course was essentially an out-and-back, with a small loop in the middle, like an inverted balloon on a string. From about 2k, there was a discernible gradient, which came more pronounced going into the loop. I was working hard, and panting up the slope.

Returning downhill, and into the second half, I struggled to regain my breath. I could feel myself slowing and at around 7k got overtaken by a Salisbury runner, Peter Callanan. The long road seemed a bit interminable, and I was rather grimly hanging on.

Into the final mile, and the gentle uphill slope was tough. The plan was to sprint the final 200m or so from the road turning to the playing field finish line, which really did for me. Peter had decisively beaten me to first M50, and I finished 12th place in 37:55; here are my stats. My pacing wasn't terribly pretty, but as Mrs S pointed out, I'm still relatively new on the racing block at the moment, re-learning old lessons, and possibly still depleted after last weekend. Racing in lovely countryside on a spring morning... works for me.

Eastleigh 10k, 2022

I'd been anticipating this race very eagerly since the start of the year. Flat running - and racing - has proved to be Achilles-friendly, and so this event felt like the perfect re-launch of competitive racing after a 2-year absence thanks to Covid and injury. The lovely Mrs S wrote me a training plan which kept me on the straight and narrow with a mix of interval sessions, all of which I'd done on my own, most of them in the dark.

So here we were on a cool, bright spring morning - Fleming Park was rammed with people in various states of layerage, warming up, limbering up and chatting in excited anticipation. We met the Romsey gang and I stripped down and beetled off to the start.

The last (only) time I ran this race was in 2013, when I positioned myself too close to the start line, as a consequence set off too fast, and finished in 37:38 after a war of attrition. Determined not to do this again, I asked several folk around me what they were aiming for and settled into the 37-something zone. 

I was very conscious of starting steadily, and clocked the first km in 3:40; at the top end of sensible. I found myself behind a trio of Winchester runners and planned to use them as my pacers. This worked OK up the hill in km 4, but they drifted away thereafter as we ran down a gentle descent and back past Fleming Park.

Approaching 7k, I turned east onto Derby Road. The headwind made it really tough here, and I had to dig in quite hard in as the field was quite spaced out and there was no one handy to tuck in behind. Two right turns later and I was heading west, the wind behind me, and it was a matter of pushing for the finish. The final kms were 3:41 and 3:43, which belies the effort I put into the final section. Into Fleming Park with 500m to go, I gave it everything and was pleased to overtake someone in the final few metres.

I was done for at the finish, which I reached in a chip time of 37:23. I'll very happily take that - it's been a long old time since I've done this kind of racing, and it's nice to be 15 seconds up on my 2013 result.  Here are my stats.

And as ever, huge gratitude to Mrs S for laying the foundations, encouraging me when all seemed doomed when my ankle seized up after the CTS Devon race, and being an all-round top coach. A very satisfactory outing!

At the finish with Liz, Steve, Alex, Keith, Ryan and Neil