Set off this morning for the Lakes after a poor week of training and a good (?) week of drinking. Also got some very good news at work on Thursday which probably added a beer or two to the total. Anyway - I decided it's Christmas, it's in God's Own County and if nothing else we have a designated driver (Vic, Aussie bloke, figure of fun and all round good egg) so we'll have a beer afterwards.
Arrived at the New DG and got parked up and after a usual toilet visits, debates on how many clothes to wear Rich and I set off for a warm up. This was pretty unstructured by recent standards, but I didn't feel any niggles so just did a few strides and made sure everything was loose.
I've got stuck at the start of this one before, so I was quite assertive in not moving back from the line when all the latecomers try to join at the front. Got away well, and was surprised to see that firstly I was somewhere in about the top 15 or so, and secondly that the other 14 weren't disappearing off up the road as quickly as I expected.
I was passed early on by a guy from Dewsbury Harriers I recognise, and thought to myself that that was any vague hope of being in the prizes gone - he's in my category and seems to be a fair bit quicker than me.
The hill on the outward leg seemed to be over quickly, and I only dropped to a 6:14 mile for mile 2. Mile 3 was back nearer 6:00 again, then we were on the return, and in my opinion harder, leg. We went through 5k in 18:30, so I guess breaking 37 was just theoretically possible, but I don't think this is a negative split course.
I was by this time with a group of maybe 6 or 7 guys, and I decided to actually "race" instead of just "run", so I pushed on a bit for half a mile and was pleasantly surprised to see we were now just 3. I had seemed stronger than both the other guys on the hills, and as all of mile 3 and half of mile 4 is uphill I decided this was my chance. I managed to get away from one of them, but the other one was doggedly staying with me, even coming past on the downhill sections.
I realised I was going to have to run a fairly fast last mile, so dug in and pushed the pace up again. It worked! The heavy breathing that'd been with me from about 2 miles in was fainter, and I finished 4 or 5 seconds up in 37:52, a time that I'm pleased with on a hilly course. I was also very chuffed to come 9th out of 380 finishers, which I think is my first top 10.
Rich had a brilliant run to break 40 for the first time with 39:41.
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