This was Niall's swan song and it was 100% turnout from the Sunday crew. Simon had an inspired t-shirt designed that we gave before the race to the fit scottish blogger. It had the brilliant "Eat My Dust" phrase on the back which captures the competitive nature of the man.
I was gutted not to be at full strength. The race has been in the diary for ages and everyone has been improving massively over the months, so today was supposed to be good. Instead I was making up the numbers and using it as a training run.
The race start was full of friendly hello's, Stacey, Rachel, Hannah, Matt (thought I'd better throw in a bloke) etc.
At the off the lads were dust. I got caught in the melly and didn't see them as I cleared the crowd. Very quickly my heart rate was over 175. That's bad. I can keep 180's going for 6 miles but not 10. So I had to try and ease off. The legs felt ok and as I eased I thought the breathing was reasonable so stuck to a 7.10-7.20 pace.
The course is pretty hilly which sorts the men from the boys and we were soon strung out. I decided to follow an experienced guy and pace off him, he seemed to know what he was doing. At mile 4 (or maybe 3) I got the shock of my life when Niall says hello! Where's he been?
Anyway, we trotted along, even managed a few words before he set off at mile 5 to see if he could crack 70 minutes. We hit 5 miles at 32.20.
I lost sight of Niall as he took off and I settled back to managing my heart. At mile 6 I spotted him 20-30 seconds ahead. When I reached the top of the hill I had 3 miles to go and thought I'd kick and see how it went. I started picking people off, one at a time but looking at the watch new I was now sub 7. Indeed, mile 7, 8 and 9 were 6.55, 7.00 and 7.01. That was good but the breathing was very hard. As I hit the last mile I knew I could step up a gear, surprisingly mile 10 was 6.36, which isn't too shabby. I was pretty tired at the end, the airways were probably 90% but that's not good when you're pushing hard.
The day was Simon's, he finished 6th in a super elite field, with a time of 58mins. Dave came in at 66mins, Paul 68 which is him back to his best, Niall 70 and me 71. Niall had an awesome second half of the race and had a few guys eating dust on the home straight. Just a shame I wasn't close enough to have seen it.
Tonight I feel ok. Legs are fine and there doesn't seem to be a reaction to a sustained bit of effort. Hopefully the recovery will continue, 2 more days of antibiotics and then I'll get the miles ratched up again.
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