Dear Diary: The Eternal Ramblings of Trevor Watson

This is my second time running the Rother Valley 10K. Last year, it was my first ever race after taking up running just 5 months earlier, and I managed a respectable finishing time of 46:09.

A year on, my speed has improved significantly, and given the 40:46 I ran two months ago at the Sheffield 10K, I was hoping to beat the 40min mark (which is my goal for the year) and maybe even get close to 39 minutes.

The day started fine and clear, although a little cool. However, there was a strong Easterly breeze, and I knew from the moment I looked out of the bedroom window that it wasn't going to be a fast race as I'd hoped, so I was just hoping to get inside 40 minutes, or at worst, beat the 40:46 time of the Sheffield 10K.

There is a long driveway into Rother Valley Country Park, where the race is held, and you have to pay to get in. This wouldn't be such a problem but for the fact that there is only one booth to pay at, and traffic generated by the race entrants competes with those folks visiting the park for recreational purposes (watersports, cycling or just a wander and a picnic). Fortunately, the race organisers have a person standing ahead of the booth, taking payment from the running entrants and directing them out of the way of the recreational traffic. It's still a time consuming process though, and this caused a problem later. Remembering this from last year, we arrived over an hour early and only had to wait a few seconds to pay. Parking was a non-issue too as we were early enough to get a decent spot which avoided a long walk to the race area.

There is a visitor centre at the park, which has plenty of toilets (vital to some runners), a cafe and a craft centre. This is quite a pretty little area, so we hung around here for a few minutes. The race finish line is perhaps 100m from the visitor centre, so we pottered up there at around 30 minutes to go, and I got my (supporters) wife and daughter settled just ahead of the finish line so they could cheer me on

The start line is a few hundred metres further up the road from the finish, so I jogged up that way to warm up. At least this year, they had the start marked with a large "START" banner, unlike last year, but given that the start is not visible from the finish, there were still people not sure where to go.

I had a good 10 minute warmup with some stretches and then stood in the shade of a tree for a few minutes to keep out of the sun. However, at 5 minutes to go, a marshall came along saying that the race start was delayed by 15 minutes due to problems getting all of the race traffic into the park. Looks like they'll have to give this some attention next year - especially if the number of entries continues to grow as fast as it has done over the past 2 years. So, I did a little more jogging and stretching to keep my muscles fresh, hung around under the tree for a few more minutes, then we were ready for the off. I positioned myself pretty close to the front - remembering last year when I got stuck behind walkers and lots of slow runners for the first mile. I tried to be realistic with my position in the pack to I didn't get in the way of too many faster runners, but also not get behind the slow people who think they need to start right at the front of the field to get a good time.

The race hooter got us going just under 15 minutes late and we were away. I think I must have picked a reasonable starting point as there were only a couple of slow people in front of me, and I quickly got around them without having to run in the ditch as I did last year. The first mile seemed to take forever, but came up in a very fast 6 minutes ("too fast!", I hear you experience runners saying.). This bit is slightly downhill, though, and the wind was pretty much behind us. The second mile took me 6:35. It was much harder - partly because we were running on a gravelled track and partly because of the turn into the wind after about 1.25 miles. I was suffering between miles 1 and 3 - my legs felt really heavy and lethargic. However, I did push as fast as I could. Mile 3 took just under 7 minutes, which was rather shocking, but I think it was the effect of the wind which was quite strong between the 2 mile mark and around 2.75 miles where you turned so that the wind was almost behind you. By mile 4, my legs didn't feel as heavy, but they'd stopped responding to my requests for a faster pace. I still managed this in 6:30 though (but it was slightly downhill with a side to tail wind). I also found that I could psuh slightly harder by increasing my breathing rate using a technique I developed toward the end of the Sheffield Half Marathon. Mile 5 was the hardest of all. I knew I was struggling and every few hundred metres, someone would pass me. The wind had definitely picked up, though and it took a huge effort to maintain forward momentum in some places. This mile took 7:10 and I knew things weren't going to plan. Around half of mile 6 was with the headwind too. However because of the turn in the course, there was a bit with a side to tail wind which did help a little, although I was almost totally shot at this point. I managed a disappointing 6:53. The last 1/4 mile to the finish is pretty much all downhill and last year I sprinted it. This year I had absolutely nothing left to give. I wanted to sprint - especially as my wife and daughter were there cheering, but I just could not get anything more out of my legs (this might have been a mental issue, but it felt physical at the time). I did manage to maintain my position though, thankfully, and popped over the finish line in an official time of 41:24 (I made it 41:20, but who's counting).

Post race, I was feeling pretty dispirited. Looking back now, I think it was partly exhaustion. I've never run as hard as this before, and was pretty dehydrated after the race, which is unusual for me in a 40 minute stint. I was primarily disappointed because I didn't even come close to bettering my March 10K time, which I had fully expected to easily beat.

My spirits were lifted, however, late on Saturday evening, when the results were posted. I managed a very impressive 67th place out of 744 finishers, and was 7th out of 84 in the male 40-44 age group. This compares very favourably with the Sheffield 10K in March, where I was 89th out of 732 finishers and 9th out of 73 in my age category. So, all in all, I'm pretty chuffed with myself, although I'm still a little disappointed with the time itself.

I'd just like to finish with some comments about the race organisation itself:

Good
Plenty of marshalls, more toilets than last year, good signing of the start (although it would be useful to include a start direction indicator for newbies), accurate distance markers, drinks station half way round.

Bad
Why, oh why do you insist on using mile markers for a race which is in kilometres? Drinks in plastic cups are a pain to get without spilling half of it when you grab it off the marshall. That funnel one person wide at the finish line - what a totally stupid idea that was when you have large groups of people finishing at the same time. I even witnessed queues of people waiting to finish at one point! A race clock on the finish line would have been nice, given that it's two laps of the course.

Ugly
Getting into the park and actually parking for the later arrivals. Traffic trying to use the narrow park roads on which people were still running.