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