Eventually we started to move forward and over the start
mats. As you would expect the beginning
was a bit congested but after a short distance it ‘clogged’ up again whilst
people negotiated around some tricky bollards along the pedestrian area of
Salford Quays.
After a couple of kilometres everything settled down and it
was time for me to mentally tick off the kilometres to the half-way point.
Apart from the Club 10k Handicap, this was the first 10k
race that I had done in over a year, so I was feeling a bit anxious about my
pace and if I could finish in a respectable time. Leading up to the half-way point I was
feeling OK and made the decision not to slow down and grab a drink from the
water station. The weather was fairly
warm but not as hot as when I took part in this race last year.
From 5k onwards I decided that I needed to start ‘picking’ a
few people off, which helped to distract me from the time and distance that I
was running (even though it was only 10k)!
This strategy worked and then in the last 2k I upped the pace with the
hope that I might be on for a PB.
The last kilometre is up and over the bridge back down to
the Lowry, then along a tree lined path and back to the finish. Just as you come over the bridge the timing
clock is visible and I was gutted to see that I had run over 56 minutes and had
another kilometre to run – doing a quick calculation in my head meant that I
had missed my PB, even though I thought I had been running faster. I can hear you all saying ‘but what about
your Garmin’ , well, in all the delay at the start I had forgotten to press
start until some minutes into the race so I hadn’t really been looking at it.
The queue for the ‘goody bag’ was really bad and I nearly
gave up and came home without one but decided to stick it out. There was a medal, bottle of water and a
small rucksack.
Worsley Physio was providing a free sports massage pre and
post race, so I took advantage of this.
The queue for the physio was nearly as long as for the goody bag but you
got to the front much quicker. Whilst
waiting my turn, I suddenly realised that the clock time that I had seen would
have been slower than my actual time as I’d been mid pack at the start …. ! Doh!
I called and got
Millie’s cookies (more than I needed) and a drink before leaving the Lowry
Mall. You had to spend £5 to get your
car parking ticket stamped so that you didn’t have to pay the standard car
parking fee. I then drove home and
quickly checked the results page… Yippee 58.44 a new PB for me!!
I seem to be having a problem with finishing lines, times
and watches at the moment!
For more information, visit the website.
Jill J.
No comments:
Post a Comment