Race Review - North District Championships

Another trip to Inverness to defend my North Championships hurdles title. Last year I thought was my 24th Championship, so this year I think is my 25th. And 21 years of holding either (or both) hurdles title, which will now be 22 years. No spoiler there, the entire North District continues to fail to find any Senior athlete willing to even take part in the hurdles against me. The point is approaching where I am going to be unable to get over the big hurdles safely and I may have to shift back to the 400mH if I want to extend my streak, but we are not quite there yet. The time wasn't great but considering I only even see hurdles once a year it wasn't actually that bad either.

More importantly I took part in the 5,000m. That gave me a chance to test out my GB suit in a proper race. I wanted to run close to, and possibly under, 19 minutes. That works out at 3:48 / km.

Garmin splits by kilometer were 3:30, 3:45, 3:51, 4:00, 3:54, 0:32. You might notice the strange 32 seconds at the end which appear to be beyond the 5,000m mark. This is apparently the amount of garmin error that you get on a running track and did seem to spread pretty evenly through the race so more accurate splits would be around 3:36, 3:51, 3:57, 4:06, 4:00. So, a bit too fast for the first kilometer, about right for the next one and almost spot on target through 3k, and then a bit of a drift as I ran out of gas and realised that two rest days hadn't been enough to get me out of the hole I have dug over the last 6 months. 

That fast first kilometer was due to having a group in front of me giving me a bit of shelter from the wind, and giving me a nice pace to follow. Once they started to stretch away and left me working in to the wind on my own that was when the pace started to slip away.

Still my fastest time for 5k ever, and I think there was a chunk more in me if I had other people to run with, a bit less wind, had taken a better taper or even if I had just paced it slightly better. Three of those should be better at Bratislava. The pace judgement could easily be worse.

I would have been a bit happier if the garmin kilometer splits had been accurate and I had clocked inside 19 minutes as garmin and Strava think, but still happy enough with a PB and a decent solo effort. 


5000m - 19:31.03.
110mH - 22.90 secs.