This was my third running of the Tatton Park 10k this year having run in January and February. Both of which were in very windy conditions but I still managed to set a PB in both, that February PB of 37:48 still stands now.

I went into the August running of this race with little hope of running a PB, in fact, I wasn’t even targetting close to a PB. After tearing my calf muscle in May, my running has been very limited. It has only been the past four weeks where I have been able to run 10km again and only at “easy pace”. I have only been able to do two interval sessions in training so far.

So with that in mind, my target today was firstly to run the race and come out still as healthy as I started. If I was to pick a time, I guess I would have picked sub 40 to keep the current streak going.

With my new running coach comes a different approach to race day, well different for me. Typically I would just rock up to the start line, run the race and go home. Then under my previous triathlon coach, he introduced warm up and cool downs, I know right groundbreaking stuff. These warm ups were a stepped approach, 3 mins at 8 min pace, 3 at 7 min and 3 at 6 min, designed to get the heart pumping and the muscles ready.

With Charlotte, she had me running an easy-paced 1 mile warm up with 3 x 10-sec strides, then a 2 mile cool down afterward. I run both the warm up and cool down at 9min pace today.

Splits: 5:59, 6:04, 6:36, 6:47, 6:39, 6:58, 5:44

My plan was to go out hard at my “usual 10k pace” and see how long I can hold on to it, I knew I wouldn’t be able to run the whole race at 6min/mile pace as my fitness just isn’t there at the moment.

The first mile is mostly flat so I knew if I couldn’t hold 6min pace there then it just wasn’t going to happen.

Thankfully, I did and managed to sneak a 5:59, job done, first mile on target and ticked off. Although, it felt harder than I thought it should. Now I know running at 6min pace isn’t easy but it just didn’t feel how I remembered it.

Mile 2 is mostly downhill or flat with a little kick up at the end where you run a U-turn on some gravel. With the favourable gradient, I was able to maintain that sub 6 min pace for the first 0.8 of mile 2, that slight uphill towards the U-turn slowed me to a 6:04 mile, I wasn’t too fussed about being slightly over the pace goal. I knew there were more difficult challenges ahead.

Mile 3 was a little loop through the woods along a trail path before returning back to the main path (pictured above). The section through the woods was uphill again and I felt this taking the energy out of me, the uphill running was going to be a problem for the rest of this race, the hills aren’t massive but running any uphill gradient at pace takes fitness levels that I just don’t have right now. 

This mile I dropped to 36secs over the pace target but one plus from this mile was we got to see a herd of about 15 deer come running across the path just in front of me, then they just stopped on the grass alongside us and pretty much lined up two by two. The guy next to me even commented that they looked like Santa’s reindeer in training for the sleigh ride.

Mile 4 was pretty much uphill from start to finish, my pace slowed even more of this hill, I wanted to save something for the end, if I could! at this point two guys came past me, putting me in 17th place. 

The next mile was back down the hill of mile 4, some releif and chance to pick the pace back up. In my previous two runnings of this race, mile 5 has been sub 6 min pace, today I just didn’t have the energy to pick it up. I tried and was 8 seconds faster than the previous mile, but still 39 seconds off pace. I lost another place here.

Mile 6, we are back going uphill once again before turning into the last push for home. The hill took it out of me again, I could feel myself slowing and lost another place, I tried to hang on to him which helped to bring my pace under 7 mins for that split.

Then when I was in the last quarter of a mile, I could see that I was close to sub 40 so I kicked a bit, I gave it everything the legs had, ultimately, the legs had more to give than the body could handle so I missed out on a sub 40 by 4 seconds.

So it was a 40:03 and 19th place overall today. Some way off the 3rd place and 37:48 PB from February’s run, but that wasn’t the aim of today. I achieved my goal of running my first race in four months and I finished as healthy as I started, if not a very tired healthy. That time of 40:03 is actually my 4th fastest 10k ever, only the three races at the beginning of this year have been quicker and that is despite the calf injury which resulted in 8 weeks of not running and no real speed work, just the pure speed that I have to build on now going forward.

I do have to remind myself on days like this that you don’t go out and smash PB’s every week, you can’t race your fastest just coming back from an injury and more importantly, my goal isn’t to smash 10k’s, my goal is to train for and hopefully beat my course PB at the New York City Marathon in 3 months time.