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.