While hunting around for events to enter we came across Sportsklubben Rye’s Ryeløpet. This is a 5k race around Kongeskogen, Bygdøy. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I arrived yesterday evening, half an hour before the appointed time. The online details were a bit scant. I’d made a bank transfer but wasn’t totally convinced I’d even managed to enter successfully.
Thankfully when I made it to the front of a queue which I had assumed was registration my name appeared on a list and I was duly given a stick-on number and emiTag for timing. As everyone assembled for the start it was clear that this was a reasonable size race (by Norwegian standards) with 232 runners appearing in the results and NRK1 on hand to record the action for TV.
In order to avoid dying half way round I decided to start a couple of rows back from the front. As my side of the field crawled forwards and the other side raced for the narrow path ahead I was soon regretting this decision. Still, after a minute or so I had overtaken the stragglers and was moving at a reasonable pace. Unfortunately this also seemed to be the pace of the leading lady and, indeed, I spent the rest of the race struggling to stay just in front of her.
Perhaps the starting strategy did pay off a little as, come the last km, I did still have a bit of energy left in my legs. My splits, however, show that the last lap was actually only 4 seconds faster than the second despite covering exactly the same ground. (Okay – they did make you run down to the beach at the finish and back up again but that should have been compensated for by the realisation that the first women was still just on my tail!)
My final time? 18:04. I can’t believe there was a time when, according to my records, I ran 15:05 for a 5k. Admittedly that was round a flat Portsmouth waterfront rather than an undulating woodland but I doubt I could manage anywhere near that now. Do I just accept it as old age or think about actually doing some training? (Well – probably need to do something more than just think about it!) Some nice photos of the event on Kondis (fortunately none of me).
Decided to have this week off running the SRM as there is orienteering on Thursday night.
Dave,
I feel that I should point out that I at least expect laps to “cover exactly the same ground” that being to me at least the defination of a lap. Not to mention the fact that if I could manage 5km in under 20 minutes I would be over the moon.
cheers,
Neil
At least one of the definitions of lap in my dictionary is simply “one section of a journey” but that notwithstanding, I think I actually meant kilometre. I’d probably be perfectly happy to run 5k in 18 minutes if only once upon a time I hadn’t been able to run it much faster!
Dave