Bupa London 10000 Race report

Talk about miserable conditions! It was pretty wet and a little blustery which didn't really help my mood going into the race. It was so miserable I didn't do a warmup, but that doesn't really mean much...I hate doing warm-ups. So enough of the chit-chat...I got around in (officially) 1hr 2m 55s which I'm happy enough with. Its a PB for me, so thats always good. Not too sure I could have given it much more (without blowing up), so in that regards, can't ask for much more.

I'm happy to report that I acheived three out of four of my goals for this race (see previous post). I'm really chuffed with that, so hopefully can progress with them for my next 10k.

Firstly, I ran the distance non-stop. This was actually pretty tough as I really had to fight with myself to keep going at times. Having other people around helps a lot, but I think the biggest help was that I'd set that out as my number one goal for the race.

Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, I ran a PB. Again, I don't think I could have done it much faster so happy enough there.

Thirdly, I ran a negative split...just about. I didn't really use HR to pace myself, but all the same it seemed to settle around the 170-172bpm mark for most of the race. This is about 10bpm higher than I normally train at, so would imply that I was slightly outside my "comfort" zone in the race. Officially, my splits were 31.32 and 31.24. Like I say, not a massive difference, but still a negative split all the same.

Finally, a word on what my Garmin had to say about things. Notice that the distance as 10.43km in 1.03.10 (6.03 pace). I guess that this means that over the course of the race I ran the guts of an extra half km, most likely dodging people or by not taking the "racing line". Bit of a sickener really, as that would have put me within reach of my fourth goal, breaking the hour mark. Oh well, I guess there's always next time.