Ran my third Ballycotton 10 yesterday (7 March 2004)! My first
attempt two years ago was for a bit of crack. Started at the
back of the field: jogged around the first half, speeding up
during the second half, passing a load of people in the process,
coming home in 73:25, with a negative split of nearly two
minutes. Easy! Last year was a lot more serious, coming home in
71:25 but with loads more room for improvement, I thought. I
felt OK at the end but was told that I looked like death warmed
up, sporting a sort of green/gray pallor. Yuck!
My training this year was much better than before, or so my
running log was telling me. Did 41:53 in the Hollymount 10KM
before Christmas and then last week ran a PB of 26:19 in the
Quilty four miler. Did four 20 mile weeks during February and
tapered with two 10 mile weeks in the lead-up to Ballycotton.
I even went as far as going to a physio last week to check out a
few niggles I was having with my left knee and my right achilles
tendon.
All looked fairly OK for a decent stab at sub-70:00, or so I
thought. The day itself, yesterday, was almost perfect. If
anything it was too warm and too sunny. No wind, no rain and a
great race atmosphere as always. Almost perfect for a good time.
I'd even lined up a hare to help me i.e. the same lad who got me
through Hollymount a few months before. I felt that he was very
probably stronger than me, but if I could keep with him for 6 or
7 miles, that he would pull me though 10 in my target time.
My plan was to get to 8 miles in as much under 56:00 as possible
and take it from there. (The first and last two miles are down
from and up to the start/finsh in the village itself.) I was
hoping to do the first three miles in 6:50s, dig in for the next
five in ~7:00s and see what that got me to 8 miles in.
Got a good start as we arrived late at the start and popped out
at the front of the waiting racers. I tucked in behind two
team-mates who were looking for sub-60s. Had a good start
staying to the left of the village down through the first mile,
avoiding the hand-to-hand warfare/combat taking place down on the
road at the front.
All through the race yesterday, I ran it on its merits i.e.
without resorting to looking at my mile splits at any stage. I
did get an idea of how I was doing at miles three, five and 7;
there were race clocks at three and five and someone shouted out
the odds to someone behind me at 7.
I thought I was fairly good at pacing myself but this went out
the window totally during this race. I stuck with my hare until
just after 3.5 miles but he was too strong and easily moved ahead
at that stage. I could still see him in the distance at 10KM but
after that he was gone from me for good.
All in all, my first three miles were fast, very fast: 6:27, 6:33
and 6:43 and I was feeling it. Got to three miles well under 20
minutes. That hurt, but not that much, I tried telling myself.
Still had 7 to go. No point in panicking...yet. Nothing as
lonely as being stuck out on the road with nowhere to go except
onwards or out.
I knew that my first three miles were fast but I kept on going,
each mile getting slower and slower, albeit not quite as quickly
as I thought they might be. By mile five, I quickly calculated
that I hadn't lost much time to two near 7:00 splits: 6:55 and
6:56. 33:36 for five, with my five mile PB being 33:04.
Not bad *but* I still had the daunting task of repeating the dose
over the second five. Did I feel like I had a sub-36:25 inward
five in me, including the deadly last two, which I did in 14:38
last year? Hummm... All I knew at five miles, as I hadn't been
looking at my splits, was that I was fast and that I probably
needed to do 7:10s on the way back to duck in under 70:00.
By this stage, I was coming back to the field, slowly but
steadily i.e. people were starting to pass me in one and twos
and, more worringly, threes and fours! And I wasn't catching up
with anyone, unless you consider two lads, one who'd stopped to
take on water, the other who seemingly started walking because of
stitch. Not sure about the man who had started to jog back
against the field for unknown, to me, reasons? I seem remember
people doing the same in previous years around the four mile mark
too. Mr. Ballycotton, himself, cruised by me soon. He had very
soon disappeared into the distance too.
Got to mile 6 "quicker" than I expected. When you're in trouble,
you're always looking for the next mile marker around each blind
bend, sometimes just out of pure desperation or to distract
yourself from the discomfort. Then 10KM, though there was no
clock there unlike other years? 42:16 for 10KM, my record from
Hollymount from November last being 41:53. Phew... Oh-oh...
Which?
Now my good start really started to weigh on me, although my
splits for miles 7 and 8 held together relatively well, 7:05 and
7:08 respectively. I probably felt that they were slower as the
torrent of humanity coming from behind me kept getting more and
more numerous. I was mostly running in the dead centre of the
road and they weren't just passing me on one side or the other
but on both, sometimes at the same time. Struggled to 8 in what
turned out to be around 55:04.
My gut instinct was that I was in the high 54:00s or low 55:00s,
a full minute or more faster than last year but I still had the
last two uphill miles to go, much of the 9th mile winking and
teasing at me up ahead. At this stage I just collapsed on the
road, methaphorically speaking. I tried taking on water around
there but only succeeded in drowning myself. One really has to
stop if one is to properly ingest on any liquids or else I just
haven't learnt how to do it on-the-move yet? Cups aren't worth a
toss. Small bottles are a much better idea when running. Should
I have stopped to draw breath, even if only for 10 seconds? I
mightn't have been able to start again :(. I'd never stopped
before in a race and wasn't about to start now (not counting my
first road 10KM a long time ago).
I just tossed the water away in despair/disgust and shuffled on
:(.
I felt myself getting slower and slower, hardly being able to put
one leg in front of the next. People keeping zooming by me.
Eventually I got up/scrambled around the corner just before the 9
mile marker. About .1 miles back from mile 9, a Loughrea lad
saluted me as he "sprinted" past me. How I wished that I had
anything inside me to go with him. I made a mental note to find
out how he finished as I thought that he would probably break
70:00. He quickly disappeared around and up the bends at the
start of the last mile. My 8 mile time i.e. mile one to nine was
inside my 8 mile record, at 56:30.
I tried to hang onto an older man who was struggling ahead of me
but he burnt me off. I then tried to slipstream alongside a tall
chap who was in obvious trouble, as I was, but he lost me, too,
before the 1000m-to-go marker.
My breathing was fine but my legs were just made of lead or
something else completely inert and unresponsive. My good work
at the beginning of the race was being rapidly undone by my
unwilling body or I just didn't have it in me or I'd just blown
up or all three? My mind was alert-enough and willing; my body
and especially my legs weren't.
1000m, 400m, 300m, 200m to go and I eventually got to the top of
the hill and some minor respite. People were still passing me
out. The final push for some, the final agony for others.
Aaggghhhh... I was passed in the final two yards by an
enterprising Clare woman whom I'd beaten the previous week in
Quilty.
It felt like I'd been passed by about 250 people during the race
but it was much closer to 100 to 120 in reality. It's so nice
passing people out during a race as it's a sign of strength but
the opposite is also true. My 9th mile split was 7:54 while I
relatively skated home in 7:33 for mile 10.
My Loughrea friend did indeed easily dip under 70:00, scoring
69:32. As did my hare who clocked an excellent 68:25. I got to
9 miles in 62:58 and would have needed to do the last mile in
sub-7:02 fashion to come home under 70:00 by my own watch. As it
was, I was relatively pleased to check out in 70:31.
Close but no cigar!
Reasons to be happy:
* Broke my PB by 54 seconds.
* Held it together relatively well after being in trouble very
early in the race i.e. mile three.
* Knowing that I'm very close to breaking 70:00, with an
excellent opportunity in Clare to go one better next month.
* My achilles and knee gave me almost no trouble during the race.
Reasons to be unhappy:
* Didn't break 70:00 yesterday on what was an outstanding, nay
almost perfect, day for racing.
* The way I finished the race was totally unlike me.
* Getting my pacing all wrong early on and not being able to
recover i.e. running a poor race from a tactical point of view!
* Not having enough long runs under my belt since Christmas to be
able to overcome the problems I encountered yesterday. Not
having run enough miles in the last two months more generally?
* The race in Quilty last week was very hard on the balls of both
my feet, especially the last downhill mile, which I did in 6:02.
The self-same balls started giving me trouble very early on
yesterday. Burning sensation? Whether that was because of the
quickness of the last Quilty mile (downhill) and then the first
four miles (mostly downhill) yesterday, I'm not sure. I also got
some minor blistering on my little toe.
* The race in Quilty in general? Did my running it last Sunday
have an effect on my performance yesterday?
Splits:
6:27.51
6:33.56
6:43.47
6:55.15
6:56.38
7:05.42 - 1:33.99
7:08.12
7:13.87
7:54.81
7:33.46
--------
70:31.75
Last mile (1609 metres)
609 - 2:53.08
600 - 2:55.06
200 - 0:56.59
100 - 0:26.62
100 - 0:22.11
James.