Today was the day of the Eastleigh 10K and Fun Run. As the latter wasn’t until the afternoon, I went over on my own in the morning. It wasn’t exactly ideal conditions with the temperature hovering just above zero and even that was until you took the biting cold in to account. At least it was dry though! I had put 36 minutes down as my target time and, having never done a 10K on the (reasonably) flat before, I wasn’t really sure how realistic this was. (My PB is, I believe, 35:36 at the undulating Brading 10K back in 2004).
The race started fairly well and I made it round the first half in 17:45. Unfortunately, although my legs felt fine, my stomach wasn’t happy . I was wretching at 9k and finally parted company with the contents of my stomach just after I crossed the finish line in 36:32. I’m not sure if I hadn’t left enough time after breakfast (I’ve got too used to going running on a Tuesday evening straight after dinner, forgetting what a difference it makes when you’re really trying!) or whether it was the slightly out-of-date gel I had in the half an hour before the start. Either way, it’s not a bad time but I’m left wondering what it could have been…
I returned home to pick up the rest of the family so that Emma could run the 2K fun run. Her only other race was in the pouring rain at the Hursley 10K last year so this may have seemed like a distinct improvement. She did, however, start off in all of the clothes you see in the photo, only discarding the coat because it was getting in the way a bit! She insisted on going round on her own (probably off the back of last week’s string course). I’ve no idea how long she took (probably something around 10 minutes if the timestamps on the photos I took afterwards are to be believed) but most importantly she was still smiling at the end. Then only one more trip to Fleming Park for swimming lessons later in the day!
I’m a bit worried that if she does 2k in 10 minutes it’s going to be even sooner than I thought before she’s beating me!