Wedtonbirt 10k

An early start today as we drove to the Westonbirt Arboretum for a 10k race.

We discussed my tactics a couple of days before, as I am never good at working out how fast to run. Darren suggested that I mentally splitt the race in to two 5 kilometre segments, and running them both in 28 minutes exactly, making a total time of 56 minutes.

We set off together but Darren had gone within seconds, so I got on and tried to do my best with my target time. I ran the first kilometre about on target, the second too slow, the third faster to try to make the time back, the fourth too slow again, and I crossed the 5k mark 20 seconds down, so quite pleased really.

The second set of times was roughly the same as the first, but after 8k I tried to pull the time back, then I ran as fast as I could on the last kilometre. I hadn't looked at my watch for ages, and the finish line was further than I expected, but when I looked down I realised that I had finished in 56 minutes and half a second!!

Brilliant timing, if I say so myself!

We had planned to walk around the Arboretum afterwards, but after we had spent the best part of an hour running through most of it, and basically it was a glorified wood (although with lots of fancy varieties of trees), we just decided to get in the car and head home.

Ps, just seen the results and I was 2nd out of 19 in my age group, and 73rd out of 422 ladies overall. Pleased with that.