Leamington Regency 10k - 06 April 2008...

Distance: 10k (6.2 miles)

In a time of...
hh:mm:ss
00:37:18

Finishing Position: 17
Number of finishers: 1336
Putting me in the top: 1.27%

It's not often we see snow round where we live, and it's even more rare an occurrence that we get 2-3 inches of it on the ground, but that's exactly what happened whilst I was getting my final night's sleep before racing the Leamington Regency 10k. I woke up around 3am to see snow coming down for the skies above and I remember thinking in a somewhat tired state "hmmm. this could be interesting", then as I finally woke just before 7am to get my breakfast everything was white. "FANTASTIC!" I thought, for some reason I tend to run quite well in unfavourable conditions and the only question running through my mind was how much extra time I should allow for driving to pick up my friend Simon (a friend from Uni who I ran the 2007 Mayday 5 and Birmingham University 5k with) and also Christopher (my older brother) who were also racing.

After I did the rounds and collected my racing buddies, we arrived and parked up near the start area with around half an hour to spare. In those conditions half an hour is a long time to spend, with snow virtually everywhere it was hard enough to keep feet dry when just standing around, but come warm up time, it was nearly impossible to avoid running in the snow and getting cold/damp feet. I then wished Simon and Christopher well, and lined up at the start fairly near to the front.

Soon the race started with the sound of an air horn. I was immediately caught up in traffic, people running much slower than I was hoping too. I dropped back a place or two to allow myself to get right over to the edge of the race field and overtake down the outside - I passed the small crowd who were causing the holdup and settled into a steady pace.

Since I've improved further and further I've noticed the density of runners around me whilst racing has become less and less, and this race would be no exception. I chased one guy for the first 3km around the golf course, eventually passing him on a long steady ascent. Catching the next competitor was a little tougher, and every time I seemed to be making any ground on him he would soon manage to put another few strides between us.

Eventually, just before the race left the perimeter of the golf course, there was a short sharp downhill. Downhill running is something I seem to be able to do fairly well, and I managed to pass this competitor and put a bit of a gap between us. I was aware that the next runner ahead of me was the very talented U17 runner Philip McCorquodale, also a member of Kenilworth Runners. I followed Phil for around 2km, finally putting some ground between us at the 8km mark. The race then left the roads again to complete a lap of a park (I forget its name) where I was started to feel pretty tired. Stupidly I began to look over my shoulder to see what (if any) kind of a gap I had from Phil behind me - in a quick glance I saw not one, but a small cluster of runners; they were a good 20m back but obviously these guys were finishing strong so I decided I needed to really push to try and avoid being caught. At 9km one guy had broken away from the small cluster and was on the chase - negative thoughts entered my head and I accepted this guy was going to catch me. I very much regret that now - had I not looked over my shoulder there's a reasonable chance I wouldn't have accepted defeat and tail off at the end of the race - as it turned out I congratulated the guy on a great run as he passed me with around 250m to go. As we entered the finishing straight, which was grass covered in broken ice/compressed snow - I felt no desire to put a final sprint in as I always have done in the past; there was nothing to gain from it other than a few seconds. The guy that passed me in the final stages of the race finished 6 seconds ahead - I'm sure if I'd pushed that little bit harder I could've made up the 6 seconds (though probably nothing more!).

A new 10k PB, and a highest percentile finish to date was the result - with sore calves and a great memory of the day thrown in for good measure. I think I'll be back next year!