at the races again

The 21st Jetty 2 Jetty this morning, though only my second time at the event, it would be what I term as my 'home race' seeing as its the closest one to my house I run in... A call the previous night from a nervous friend of Mr Chelles meant I left a little earlier than planned, she was running her second ever 10km and didnt want to turn up by herself. No problem, she picked me up at 7.15am and we were there 10minutes later. Numbers were collected, I wished her good luck and she went off to warm-up for the 10km. I was just doing the 5km so made my way to the start to see everyone off. There were a few familiar faces in the crowd, Langy, Karen and Sara were there supporting also.

My goal for the 5km was sub 23 and 22.30 would have been the ideal. I saw Matty just before the start. I am always winding him up about putting me in RFYL, he told me I would need a sub 22.30 to stand a chance of being in the top 10, so there was some pressure/encouragement to get cracking.

It was a small crowd, probably about 250 at the start, I quite enjoy these smaller races over the shorter distances. Everything started smoothl, including trusty ipod and garmin, Opppss, I'd remembered about the hill coming home but had somehow magically made the one right at the start disappear from memory. Soon got over that and before I knew it was at the 1.5km marker for the schools 3km run, then it was the 2.5km marker and we were heading for home. Nice little motivator running past all the 10kers, who rightly enough were starting to tire at this point. I had three girls in my sights who I knew were in the 5km race. I saw the hill ahead and knew this would be a good time to do some catching up, sure enough two of them slowed dramatically and started to come towards me, I dug deep and got over the hill. Two down, one to go. With every up hill, there is an equal and opposite down hill - yipppeee for the downhill, I used it to my full advantage, even clocking up my faster point of the race with the garmin measuring sub 4min/k at one point. I caught the third and final girl of the three with 500meters to go. Finished in 22.40, a new PB.


Looking at the results I think I will have placed outside the top 10, so still a bit to do before I make published glory, but maybe next time :)