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Eventually we started to move forward and over the start mats. As you would expect the beginning was a bit congested but after a short distance it ‘clogged’ up again whilst people negotiated around some tricky bollards along the pedestrian area of Salford Quays.
After a couple of kilometres everything settled down and it was time for me to mentally tick off the kilometres to the half-way point.
Apart from the Club 10k Handicap, this was the first 10k race that I had done in over a year, so I was feeling a bit anxious about my pace and if I could finish in a respectable time. Leading up to the half-way point I was feeling OK and made the decision not to slow down and grab a drink from the water station. The weather was fairly warm but not as hot as when I took part in this race last year.
From 5k onwards I decided that I needed to start ‘picking’ a few people off, which helped to distract me from the time and distance that I was running (even though it was only 10k)! This strategy worked and then in the last 2k I upped the pace with the hope that I might be on for a PB.
The last kilometre is up and over the bridge back down to the Lowry, then along a tree lined path and back to the finish. Just as you come over the bridge the timing clock is visible and I was gutted to see that I had run over 56 minutes and had another kilometre to run – doing a quick calculation in my head meant that I had missed my PB, even though I thought I had been running faster. I can hear you all saying ‘but what about your Garmin’ , well, in all the delay at the start I had forgotten to press start until some minutes into the race so I hadn’t really been looking at it.
The queue for the ‘goody bag’ was really bad and I nearly gave up and came home without one but decided to stick it out. There was a medal, bottle of water and a small rucksack.
Worsley Physio was providing a free sports massage pre and post race, so I took advantage of this. The queue for the physio was nearly as long as for the goody bag but you got to the front much quicker. Whilst waiting my turn, I suddenly realised that the clock time that I had seen would have been slower than my actual time as I’d been mid pack at the start …. ! Doh!
I called and got Millie’s cookies (more than I needed) and a drink before leaving the Lowry Mall. You had to spend £5 to get your car parking ticket stamped so that you didn’t have to pay the standard car parking fee. I then drove home and quickly checked the results page… Yippee 58.44 a new PB for me!!
I seem to be having a problem with finishing lines, times and watches at the moment!
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Jill J.