Bramley - 20 mile race - good grief!

By 9:15am Tom and I were in the car and on our way down the M3 towards Basingstoke - fully fuelled and looking forward to the Bramley 20 mile race we were heading for.

Ha.

The reality is that we were taking turns to list our various ailments / aches / pains / other excuses for why we weren't going to do very well.

This is not a new thing though - is what you do before any race, is like a soothing ritual, and also does ensure (if you cover all the bases) that if things do go REALLY badly that you can refer back to this earlier conversation "see, I told you I was going to have trouble with.........."

Anyway, by 10am we were parked up and walking to the start - when we got there, pretty suprised to find a 20 minute long queue for depositing our bags, but we managed to do that and get in a quick toilet stop before the off.

Naturally I did the first mile too fast (7:18), and despite slowing down, also did the 2nd (7:28) and third (7:38) too fast as well - by the 4th mile I thought I had cracked it - as I did 8:01, but then the 5th I was back to 7:45!

I didn't really have a plan (which may have been my downfall) but I knew I was going too fast - so I did slow down a bit.

Still, I went through the 10 mile mark (which was tough because it was a 2 lap race, and there were lots of people doing just 10 miles) in 1:18, and after that it was pretty much 8:30 min/mile all the way - one part conscious decision to slow down, one part being a bit tired.

Anyway, the 2nd lap was much slower - and I had a few "what was I thinking?" moments, was overtaken by lots of people, and spent some time fantasising about faking a plastic cup based injury so I could stop - but I finished in a not too shabby 2:43.44 (by my watch) and definately didn't feel as dead at the end as I have in previous runs of that length.

Am not sure whether I could have gone any faster, but also not sure whether running more slowly at the beginning would have helped.

It is a tricky one - in shorter races, 10km let's say, I have experimented and found that if I start more slowly, I just get more slow - I don't suddenly find that I have loads of energy left in my legs and put in a stunning second half.

So my theory was - if I run faster at the start, and then just slow down as I get tired - surely I will come off better overall. It does seem to work for shorter distances - not so convinced at the longer ones!

Maybe next time I will try the slower start (yeah right).

It clearly does work for some though - I saw Alison from the Cove Joggers at the race today, and she had started pretty slowly, and then put in a few sub 8 minute miles over the back end of the race - and she was looking pretty chirpy on it.

Anyway, I was finished - got my goody bag, and some water and then went to see Tom in. He apparently had thought I was running behind him all the way round (we got split up at the start) so was pretty suprised to see me cheering for him at the finish! He was just 5 minutes behind me, and pretty happy with the result.

The 10 minute walk back to the car seemed to be about 10 miles, and we were both feeling the pain a bit by then - 20 miles is a long way you know!

Investigation into the contents of the goodie bag brought some joy though - Tom was thrilled to find a mars bar (just the thought of eating so soon after a race makes me feel ill), and I was pretty impressed with the race momento - a towel with the race logo on it! Never had that before.

Trip home was the usual race post-mortem, a stop in Sainsburys for cake, then back to the house for cheesey baked beans on toast and some sitting down.

Job done!