27th June 2015 - Lancaster 5k
I have never raced a 5k. Yes I have done the occasional parkrun, but never ran a competive 5km race against some strong club-runner opposition. They are short and intense! Now that I am focusing on trying to develop a bit of low end speed though, I decided to hunt out a 5km race to see where I currently stand over the distance and allow me to track progress since my Preston parkrun outing in February (time 16:50) and in the future.
This race was to be my benchmark for improvement. That being said, I needed to find a flat course where there will be a good group of runners to help pull me along. Lancaster 5k offered the perfect opportunity for this being not too far away from home and with the winning time generally being close to 15:00. This 5k is a series of 5 5km races which are held from Salt Ayre running track once every month throughout the season, so with running in June, I could then run again in perhaps August to track progress on the same course.
Unfortunately, the Wednesday before the Saturday race, I opted to go and have an "easy" run on the fells with my work mate, Matt Crawford. Now then..I have never ran on the fells and left the route planning to him, which turned out to be unrunable most of the way up and incorporating some steep technical decents. To cut a long story short, the run completely shot my legs and I was suffering with sore legs all the way to the start line of the race, to the point where I nearly dropped out the night before.
Amy drove me to Lancaster, offering great support as always! :-) Upon arrival is was great to see a few familiar faces. Several of the Barrow Striders were there including Phil Waite, which is certainly faster than me over this distance and facebook friend of Barlick Fell Runners, Russell Parington, who holds a sub 15min PB! There was also a few fast lads from Border Harriers that I recognised including former international ultra runner, Russell Maddams. The field certainly looked like it would allow me to push out a sub 16min, as long as the sore legs would hold up!
A 2 mile warm up and a good load of stretches, drills and strides, I found myself on the start line ready to go, whether I felt ready or not. I turned all sound alerts and vibrations off the garmin and turned it away so that I couldn't see it. I was running this race completely on feel!
The race went fairly well. I was in a group at the start, which slowly opened up. I went through the first mile in 5:05 and felt fairly good, so was certainly on for sub 16 pace. At this point there was a couple of attacks from the group, with Rob Hodgson of Border Harriers making a clear, strong gap at the front. Soon later Phil Waite make a move too but I quite simply didn't have it in my legs (or lungs) to go with him.
I was at the front of the group for a little while before Ray Edgar from Lancaster & Morcombe running club made a move. I tried to stay with him for as long as I could but with a mile to go he started to pull away further. With half a mile to go Russell Maddams moved around me and got right in front. I think he must have realised I was starting to suffer and my pace was dropping. Him being there certainly helped make sure I kept the foot on the gas. He made a small gap of several yards on me but i kept clawing it back.
Coming back into the track, with 400m to go, the winners were just finishing. I found a little in the tank to push and get around Russell to put me into 4th place. I held the pace around the top of the track and into the finishing straight hanging on to the finish.
I finished in 4th place and a time of 15:51. I was over the moon considering I wanted a sub 16 and was seriously doubting myself before the race with the sore legs. Phil Waite smashed it and significantly closed the gap between him and Rob Hodgson, finishing in 15:18 and Rob in 15:14. Great to see the training starting to pay off! Maybe with a bit more training for me, I'll be able to hang on the back of him for a bit longer too! But for the time being, the benchmark is set at 15:51! :-)
Sponsorship - TORQ Fitness
Inbetween Lancaster 5km and Manchester 10km, I was contacted by TORQ fitness with regards to their Performance Running team. I had filled out a sponsorship application a while back, to see if they could offer any help with nutrition for my charity challenges, but with my recent wins at K2B and Brathay Marathon, they have become interested in me. They are currently having a reshuffle of their team (which was a trail running team), to incorporate 3 road runners and 3 trail runners, and I am pleased to say that I have been selected to run for them on the road as a sponsored athelete with a contract for the rest of this year!
TORQ is a fitness consultancy which has ventured into developing their own performance nutritional products in order to provide a high standard of support to the atheletes which they work with. Their products, in my opion, are the best products I have found! Matt Hart himself, the owner, is a former Pro/Elite Mountain Biker. More info on TORQ can be found at:
http://www.torqfitness.co.uk
The announcment of me joining the team and a runner bio can be found at:
We love Manchester 10k was to be my attempt at the 10k distance. I hadn't really looked into the route so much but just saw it fell on a good date where I wasn't on shift at work and dived at the opportunity. Dave and Marie also decided to run so come the day Amy drove us all down in my car to make a day trip of it.
This would be the first race for me sporting the TORQ team kit. It certainly drawn a few peoples attention at Sport City and even led to me getting in a few official snaps at the finish!
Many thanks to Lisa Stonehouse for the pictures www.lisastonehouse.com
The route wasn't quite as fast and flat as I first thought it was going to be. There was lots of twists and turns which meant it was hard to get into your stride and to add there was a few very gentle climbs. Post race comments amougst the runners led to believe that the course may have been slightly long too. Despite all of this, I did manage to come out with a respectable performance. I managed to run a time of 32.53 for 6th position (or 5th position going off chip times by 1 second), which I think is a solid attempt considering I ran a minute more than that at Dalton 10k in May this year.
Many thanks to Lisa Stonehouse for the pictures www.lisastonehouse.com
Thats it now though, a 5km and 10km race time as benchmarks to go away, train and SMASH in the future! :-)
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