Target: 10km Run > Sub 40mins
It’s a dark morning when I wake. Its cold and I want to stay in bed.
I grab my running stuff and have the same breakfast I have every morning when going for run. Nothing different today. Today is just like any other training day. Except, today is totally different.
Today is the day.
When I first started running I had tried not to set myself target times for runs, simply running and keeping fit was how it started. Then I set my sights on just the thought of finishing a race. My dad egged me on to sign up to a half marathon which was the first ‘race’ I did. It was embarrassing. 2 hours 37 minutes and the last 3 miles was a leap frog race between myself and the oldest man on the Telford half marathon. 73 years old and still going strong. I beat him, just, but I chalked that up as a victory. (Well you have to start somewhere right...)
More half marathons over the next 3 or 4 years kept me trim and I started getting faster. Starting to enjoy them more. Even started to look forward to them. I then built up for the London marathon in 2012. I set my first target time and aimed for 3hours 45 minutes and just snuck under with 3.43.23. But I broke at mile 20 and I have never felt so hopeless. Literally no energy but the crowd pushed me on and along with fist fulls of jelly babies and the embarrassment of stopping with thousands watching me, I completed it. It was an amazing experience, but not one that I would define as amazing in the running sense of the word. It was simply a case of survival, pure and simple and a distance people really understood as a challenge.
I didn’t run for 4 months after that. The relentless training was simply too much and the fun of running wasn't there.
Later that summer someone suggested signing up for a 10k race. A 10k, PAH I am a marathon runner you fool, that is a distance for children or old people. But of course I entered and really enjoyed it. It was such a short, sharp hit of running and so began my love for running FAST.
Fast is a general term, but for me a 10k race was the feeling of pushing my body in a very primal way that felt more like running on adrenalin than a marathon, which felt like a much more calculated race with steady level pace to target and times to eat etc.
So back to today.
The day.
Today after months of training I am aiming for a time. A time I set myself at the beginning of summer and have trained very specifically for.
Today I wanted to break a sub 40min 10k. I had chosen the Regents Park Land Aid Run. This was a flat course and one I had lots of training on in the morning or after work. I knew the course and there would be no surprises.
I wait at the start line, nervous butterflies as I contemplate what is about to happen. I keep myself warmed up but jumping up and down like an idiot.
BANG. The starting gun goes off and I along with 250 others runners, we begin our assault. I have positioned myself right near the front to avoid any congestion. I see a young guy with squash shoes and Hawaiian shorts shoot off. I’ll catch him I think to myself, he'll burn out (at least I hope to god a guy with Hawaiian bloody shorts burns out, please after all this training and preparation don’t for the love of god let him beat me).
The first 5Km start out as planned, 4min kilometres and I'm just over the 20min mark. Need to begin picking up the pace slightly. I look down at my running watch, heart rate is at 175bpm, high but still within range to not burn out. I turn a corner and in the distance I see Hawaiian shorts guy. He is miles away! What the hell, damn you, you youthful bastard, he disappears again around the next turn.
After 25 minutes I start to feel the burn in my legs, the tell-tale sign of lactic acid starting to find its way deep into my legs. I feel like I am struggling a bit. My watch is telling me my pace is dropping slightly below the target pace. I realise I am on a false flat and it’s a slight uphill. Now this ‘hill’ is almost imperceptible to any person on a walk, but believe me, a runner will detect the slightest incline and curse gently under his breath (f’ck you hill, fuuuu’’’’’kkkk you). The ‘hill’ levels out and I turn the corner and I can feel a little extra speed coming back into my stride.
Its kilometre 8 and I can feel my whole body starting to complain now. I look down at my watch, my heart rate has crept up to 182 bpm, this is close to my maximum but Hawaiian shorts guy is creeping closer. I look at the time on my wrist and it says 32 minutes and 20 seconds and with just under 2 kilometres to go, I need to run the next 2 kilometres faster than the whole rest of the race when I am already at maximum capacity.
2 sub 4min kilometres back to back. Faster than I have ever managed at this stage of a race.
I am breathing with each foot stroke now. I can feel my lungs screaming for mercy, I am physically struggling to get enough oxygen and my body knows it. It feels horrible and at the same time amazing. I move to avoid a walker in the park, who, as I near her wheels around to find out what the hell is wheezing like an old man but also sprinting at her at full pace.
This is it, the final Kilometre, it’s now or never, and it’s at this point I realise why I love running and why I enjoy the 10k so much more than the marathon. For me it's just more exciting, I now have a decision to make that will either mean I run a decent 10k or destroy myself and truly find out what my body is capable of pushing to the limit. Think about it, outside of sports when do we truly ever push ourselves to maximum capacity.
I take a look down for one final glance at my watch. 36 mins 30 seconds. Heart rate at 191pbm! I am in top gear giving everything I have. As I turn the penultimate corner. There he is! Bloody Hawaiian shorts guy. He is just there, he looks exhausted.
I flick the next track into my headphones and my preprogramed playlist kicks into action. My favourite song comes on, where the best part explodes in my ears in the first 2 minutes which is almost exactly when I think I come up to the finishing straight.
I come level with my arch nemesis. I don’t look at him, but find a massive boost that I have caught him. I slowly start moving past him up to the last corner with a massive 300m sign looming over as. I turn the corner and as in my training; I gun it.
300m of utter agony. But also the best 300m of my life.
I start sprinting. endorphins are pumping around my body. The song kicks in, my heart rate jumps to 195pbm and I can feel my heart hammering inside my ribcage. It feels amazing, I feel like Mo fu’king farar on the finishing straight at the Olympic games.
I am on it.
100m to go and there is someone just in front of me also sprinting. I try to catch him too, but he has heard me coming and now we are both totally flat out in front of hundreds of people in a race to the finish line. I have nothing left and as we cross the line he just leads in front.
I cross the line, hitting pause on my watch and collapse at the end. I did it, it was 99% horrendous and 1% amazing or 99% amazing and 1% horrendous, I can never tell but I do know it hurt like hell. I lie down on the grass and hear a thud next to me as my arch nemesis sits next to me, looking how I feel. We both can’t talk but he puts his fist up and I know what to do. Man fist pump and he walks off to get a drink.
I look at the timing chart and I am 8th out 200 people with a time of 40mins 2 seconds.
2 seconds. 2 bloody seconds.