KENT CHAMPIONSHIP 10000m Canterbury 20 June 2012

PM: Arrived in Canterbury at the same time as Tim and Angela and we went to get changed and get our numbers but we were a little early for them as they were not quite ready for us. Once they had sorted themselves out the others had started to arrive and numbers were collected.  There was an air of nervousness around the Ladies competing in the 3000m and so I left them to it and went off and started my warm up, which mainly consisted of two laps of the Canterbury Relay course. When I got back the ladies were just starting to line up for the start of the 3000m race, so I got on a did my drills whilst they were in their early laps then watched them finish off the last few laps.  Then it was out onto the track to do last few strides before lining up for the 10000m.  In my mind I wanted to try and get under 36 mins which could be quite a tall order as my last 10km was 37'39, but its good to have a challenging target and I knew to do this I must be consistently lapping in about 1'26. I mucked the start of my watch up on the start line so therefore had to rely on the guy calling the lap times out and then do the calculations in my head on what I should be aiming for on each lap. I worked out for the first half of the race that I was about within 5s of my target and was concentrating really hard on trying to keep the even pace running going as long as possible. With about 4 laps to go I thought I had drifted about 10s outside of my target pace and I get a bit lost on where I should be, but the laps kept ticking by and before I knew it I was at the bell so I summoned all my effort for the last lap picking the pace up from the bell and gradually trying to increase after each 100m, down the final straight eyeballs out and over the line. I did not know the time until Lucy had come over and she had been recording the splits on her watch. Final time 35'53 WOW I couldn't quite believe it as I thought I had gone outside my splits on the last third of the race. Looking at the splits she had the first lap was run in 1'20 then all the others were between 1'25 & 1'27 with a 1'17 final lap. I was really please with the consistency of the splits and how close I was to the original target time of 35'50 (1'26 laps).
Tim also had a fine race as well going under 40m for the second time in three days with a sensational 38'36 knocking off another 40s.

Distance: 10 miles          Race Time:  00'35'53.9    Ave Race Pace: 5.46 m/m

Gold Medallists:  Tim V35 & Me V40