Doomben 10,000 - a good day all round!

Approached todays race with a little bit of caution. My knee was feeling okay, but I had been constantly massaging the sore spot since I was shown how on Friday, and hadn't done more than walk on the leg since Thursday morning. I promised myself that if I felt any pain I would slow down and if need be pull out.. though I wasn't sure how well I was convincing myself as a DNF wasnt the result I wanted. My aim was to run 5min/k, having broken 50mins on the Nike run I had no real goal and wanting to keep healthy I thought it better just to run at a steady pace.

At the start line MJ told me she was aiming for around a 48min time, I felt this could be realistic and told her I would aim to run this with her, but if my knee gave me any trouble I would just pull back. Well, the gun went off and we all went out fairly fast, I didnt realise quite how fast till I reached the first km in 4.13. This was a bit of a shock so we tried to drop the pace a bit but still reached the 2nd km in sub-9mins. By 3km I was joking with MJ about making sub 45min time and that we should ease back a bit or we'd have no decent goal for the next 10km. I took on water just before we crossed over the railway lines for the first time, the only managed to swallow a mouthful, I wasn't too bothered, I knew I was well hydrated and it wasn't a hot morning. At about 4km I started to break away from MJ, I was feeling good my calves were a bit tight and I made a mental note to make sure I stretched them out more before the GC.

At about 6km my knee began to feel a bit sore, I made myself pull up the pace a bit until I reached the 7km marker, well I thought it was the 7km marker but it could have been the 6.7 or 7.3 possibly as the final 4km's were double-marked which really confused me. I think that there was one sign for the Half & one for the 10km but unfortunately the only way to tell was to read the bottom of the sign, which is hard to do when running, perhaps if they'd colour-coded them like they had the bibs it woudl have been easier. Anyway, accordinly at one stage I almost thought I was on a 45min finish, I rounded the next corner expecting to see the end and instead just saw another corner! I turned in to this one and got filtered over to the left for the 10km finishers, a sign said a 100meters to go, but it was a funny 100meters, around the back of the stadium, there was no one else with me at this point and I almost thought perhaps I'd gone wrong!

I crossed the line with a time of 47.30, which is almost a 2min pb. For a run I was meant to be taking fairly easily, I was more than happy with this result. Perhaps even more surprising for me though, than getting the pb was to find out I'd come third overall for my category. The awards at Warwick were nice, but I'd always felt a bit of a cheat; fresh legs, small field etc, so to get this was really good.

Hopefully my knee will be okay, I took the precaution of not doing the 2.2k Doomben Cup and resting and stretching instead... will have to see how Monday morning goes.