Wolverton 5 mile race

Day 329 Saturday 24th November 6.1 miles : miles to date 2183.1 Stacey had two outings today, one early doors at Bedford park run with Fi and one with me at Wolverton 5 mile race this afternoon. I did feel like I was letting Gavin Garmin down a little, but I have to admit it is a great bit of kit. I helped to marshal the park run and it was great to see Steve James out with Paula , after being injured for most of the last two years. It won't be long before he's back barking orders at us in training and sharing his views in his own forthright way. Fi has had a niggle in her foot all week, which has effected her running so it was good to see her put in a very good run only seconds behind her PB. Having checked my records, it was a surprise to see that I had never raced at that distance, so come what may I was always going to get a PB. Never the less, I still wanted to go for a half decent time to add a clean sweep of PB's this year all of which bar one are at age related Gold standard. Having spent my entire running career struggling most of the time to reach Bronze, I admit to being a little greedy today and trying to get another Gold. The official results are not yet out, but by my reckoning I am very close but might have just missed out. Ohh, exciting. The early omens were not good. The weather had been getting steadily worse all day and by race start it was raining and cold. The start was very bunched and despite running at around a six minute mile pace it remained tight for over half a mile. That was due to the unusual distance and there not being that many races around, which attracted a very high number of club runners making up 90% of the field judging by the vests on display. I haven't really trained intensively for a while and I just wasn't sure what I was going to do. I tried to keep a steady pace and it was something of a surprise to go through the 10k mark quicker than my current best 10k race time. I did slow over the next mile and thought I had dropped drastically to a 6.30 plus pace, although after the race Stacey informed me that my slowest mile was 6.13 and my quickest mile was 5.59 which was the last one. I finished somewhere around 30:35, with the extra 1.1 mile being made up of the warm up and warm down. The mad as ever Martin Beare put in a sub thirty run despite last weekends sub 3 hour marathon, with the AFF also being very well represented by the Silver Surfer, Shaun Kirtley and Rebecca Fleckney with her second race of the day. Come to think of it, the winner of the potty cup is a tight call between the Beare and the Fleckers. The next race is a 10k er, tomorrow after a night's partying tonight with exuberant South Africans who will no doubt be celebrating their win over England.