Scottish 10km Road Race Champs 35:39 (1:22:40)

Sunday, June 14, 2009

As usual, Juice and I had a restless pre-race night. It was more to do with a warm room than anything. The windows only opened a crack and the temperature outside was not exactly cool anyway. Regardless, I felt fine because the sleep I had the night before was stellar. Breakfast was included with our room and was delivered to our door. I brought my Bodum so we had coffee, croissant and cereal. My belly wasn’t feeling all that great…travel seems to screw around with my plumbing. We walked over to the race start and grabbed our timing chips. We were so close we were able to go back to our room, change into our gear, attend to last minute bathroom needs and get to the race start with no probs.

The skies were clear with just a few clouds and already at 9am, it was pretty warm and muggy. I made sure I lined up at the very last minute to get near the front since there was no seeding. I was told by David, the race director, that there would be a few women running close to 35 minutes and that Toni McIntosh, the series forerunner would be leading the way. I saw a group of girls that looked serious and got right in behind them as soon as the race started. After only a half a km, one girl, who I figured was Toni, took the lead by a good 100m. I felt I was holding a decent pace at this point and stuck with my plan to hold steady for the start. I figured, as she continued to gain distance on me, that she would win by a minute or so, or I would catch back up to her farther into the race. The description of the race course was accurate. The first 2.5 kms were basically a long uphill grind followed by a long downhill and then some flatish running. Despite my attempt to gain some distance on the downhill, Toni was a good 200m in front by 2km. I almost resigned myself to the fact that I would be coming in second when I noticed a fellow just up ahead was running  very steady and was slowly closing in on runners up ahead. I surged up to him (Adam) and decided I would hold on to his lead as long as I could and that would perhaps get me up to Toni. It worked. We caught her at 7km. She held on right behind us for almost a km and then fell back. I just stared at Adam’s back and kept going, telling myself to suck it up and not slow down. He was very consistent and steady and helped me out enormously! As we rounded the last turn of the looped course, we could hear bagpipes playing! I picked it up as hard as I could go in the last 400m in case Toni was close behind and for the first time, broke the tape! I generally felt pretty good today. My breathing was good and my legs were not terribly flat from the travel. I seem to be getting stronger and I hope once we start to get into some tougher training and more than one wo a week, I will be feeliing very strong. The base work I am doing right now seems to be providing me with enough for the time being though. Results are here.

I ended up winning an Asics gift certificate worth 250 GBP and a pair of nifty Polaroid sunglasses. I am sponsored by Saucony so it looks like Juice will be oufitted for a a while! I got to chat a bit with Toni and some of the other women after the race. 

Toni and Mar

Juice!

Juice and I got a nice cool-down in on some other trails we discovered and got back in time for the awards. We had just enough time to shower and check out before catching our train to Glasgow. We caught the 1:40 train and had a hour to kill so we went and picked up a pair of shoes I saw the day before…and they were on sale!! They were a reward for the day’s win!

The train ride to Aberdeen was a lot of fun. We rested a lot…it was almost four hours and took in the beautiful countryside as we head north up the east coast. 

Zzzzz....

Mar in her New Shades!

Barb and David picked us up at the train station with their friend Eric and we drove to their home in Inverurie where we will be staying for the remainder of our holiday. It should be a wonderful week!

Cheers!

Eric and Joy came over for dinner our first night there and we had a great visit with them! 

Total Time: 1:22:40 (24.90 km)

Km Splits although I didn’t catch all the markers:

0-2: 7:16

2-4: 7:00

4-8: 14:22 (3:36 average)

8-9: 3:29

9-10: 3:27