Amazed myself

The alarm, woke me at 6:30 on a Sunday morning, and my memories switched back to the days when I raced 20 or 30 times a year, but this is 2011, and I'm 53, and to be fair, in recent years, I haven't raced that often, or anywhere near it. But today was the day that I had set as my first race of the year, and I was up and alert and jumping in the shower, with the expectations that a little child has at Christmas - yep, I have the BUG back - At long last....

The weather was divine, a perfect autumn morning, blue sky, crisp, and perfect for running. Races here are not much different to anywhere else, people mill around, we get our chips sorted, we stretch, we warm up - we wait....

The race set off at 9.30, temperature around 15 degrees, me and some 1600 others. The one difference here is that they give out the tech shirts when you sign up, and everyone wears the shirt for the race - Now I remember the advice that you never wear a new shirt for a race, always wear something you are used to running in, but here, that goes out the window, and I followed suit, so it was with my Puma Tech tee, along with the rest that we set off.

I wanted to break 45 minutes, which meant an even pace of around 5:35 per kilometre, as I felt I was in, or around that shape. At best maybe a 44 minute run with a 5:30 average was on the cards. The first Km was the same as so many, dodging the masses as we settled down, and I hit the first split at 5:32 - hey!, even at slow paces I am still good at this! I felt great, and well within the range, and then I hit a problem - I reached the 2 Km mark at 10:01 - clearly something wrong here as I had not picked up the pace at all - and this was soon confirmed at the 3 Km mark, as this one took 6 minutes, but I was running evenly and feeling great, obviously the markers were mis-aligned - thankfully in this case.

The course was flat, although a little head wind along this part of the course was troublesome, I was feeling great, running smoothly and evenly, and I just kept it going. I was easily under target times, without trying hard, no pushing, no strain, and I hit the half way point at 21:15, crap! I actually thought this was way too fast, but I wasn't struggling at all - why was everything going right?

I just kept going, running along, maintaining the pace, easing into each Kilometre mark, 5K at 26:25, over half way and well inside my target time. These few Kms were around a boring part of the Puerto Madero area, but I just kept going, still not feeling any problems, and before I knew it I was at the 7Km mark. A quick look at the watch, and I was under 37 minutes, and I knew that I could stroll home from here and be under 43 - NO WAY!!!!!

I kept the pace level, and then we turned onto the home straight, with around 600m to go, well - I never can resist a race wherever I am in the field, and no way is anyone going to get past me at the end of a race, so I picked up the pace - yep, it hurt! - and I picked off one after another, and kept going, each stride took me further up - I really don't know, but I think I must have passed around 40 runners in that last 400m, and I kicked again as we headed to the line, and crossed it, clicking my watch at 41:22 (confirmed by my chip time), WAY better than I thought I was capable of at present.

I ended up 568th out of 1615 finishers, 32nd out of 85 in my age group, and a very happy runner indeed. The training, and the weight loss, must have been working, and I can look forward to a few more races with greater confidence and belief in myself. To top it all off, after the race, I went and ran another 9k with the Hash to give me a fantastic workout for the day, which was supplemented with a few pints to celebrate - I think I deserved them today!

Picture - pre race.....