Race Review – Letchworth 5K

An essential part of marathon training is that you need to taper off at the end. For the uninitiated, that basically means you take it easy for the three weeks leading up to the race to give your body a chance to recover from the past few months of training. When you’re midway through your training the taper sounds absolutely brilliant, and you really look forward to it. But by the time you get one week into it, you start going out of your mind, worrying that you’re losing all of the fitness that you’ve worked so hard to build up.

On the plus side, in amongst this laziness, you are encouraged to do a few short, quicker runs, to keep your legs turning over but without knackering yourself out. So to this end, I made a reasonably late decision to head over to Norton Common in Letchworth on Saturday morning for my first ever 5K race.

The start line at Norton Common

On my way there, listening to England try to win the Test Match, I was reminded of a game of cricket against Letchworth that I played in six years ago. It contained a funny line in the match report that was very apt, both on that occasion and also this – it commented that one of our batsmen who was run out by a mile was ‘built more for comfort rather than speed’. Having never given a 5K a bash, and having had all of the speed knocked out of my legs in marathon training, I was pretty sure that description was going to be apt for me too! 

I turned up, wandered over to the registration desk, and handed over my £2 entry fee. It was all very relaxed and I headed off for a quiet 10 minute jog to try and loosen up the muscles. The course is two laps of the perimeter of the common and, having never set foot on it before, I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it was. Apart from the rabbit holes, which made me worry that I’d turn my ankle, but then that is a sacrifice worth paying not to run on concrete for a change.

I made my way to the start and lined up with about 60 others. After some brief instructions to mind the dog walkers, the chap shouted go and we were off. I had absolutely no idea how to pace it, so careered off down the gentle hill and quickly found myself in about 6th place. I didn't know what pace anyone else was running at, so glanced down at my watch as I'm never normally near the front. Ah, that will be it then - 5.22 pace - keep that up and I won't even get to the mile marker!

I eased off a bit and after one person overtook me, I set my sights on the new man in front. After about 1K I thought I’d go for it and overtake him, fully expecting him to come straight back past but as it happened I reckon he’d done the same as me and gone off a bit too quick. I finally settled into a rhythm that I thought was sustainable, but I daren’t look at my watch again for fear of it either being a) way too fast or b) dishearteningly slow for the effort I thought I was putting in.

I carried on around the perimeter and it really felt like a race, taking the quickest line possible and grabbing a small right-angled footbridge over a stream with my arm so as not to lose precious seconds. I lost the man behind going up the incline, and had the guy in front firmly in my sights. At the end of the first lap I was about 20 metres behind him, and told myself the goal was to get past him on lap two. As it happened, lap two whizzed past in a blur of tiredness and hanging on for grim death but alas, not passing-the-bloke-in-front-ness.

I had him in my sights for the whole lap, and he didn’t get closer or further away, I just couldn’t catch him for love nor money. I tried to sprint up to the line but had absolutely nothing left in the tank, passing through in 20:29. Once I had my breath back, and believe me it took a while, I looked at my splits. I did 6.22, 6.52. 6.51 and 6.11 for the last little bit. And my heart rate hit 184 which is the highest it has ever been.

I jumped back in the car, surprised that the Test had finished already, and headed home in a bit of a daze of exhaustion and satisfaction. I was thinking about whether I’d done it right – 'go hard or go home' as they used to say on Soccer AM – but it’s such a short distance I think you can go for broke and just try to hold on. It’s probably more satisfying that way anyway as you wouldn’t want to finish just behind someone knowing you had more left in the tank.

I’m not sure where I came as the results aren’t up yet (judging from the pictures here my guess is about 7^th). So all in all a very good effort and it will give me something to aim for should I ever be crazy enough to have another go.

The only thing left to say is that if you’ve never tried a 5K, I highly recommend it and can’t believe I’ve gone all of these years without doing one.  There are Park Runs all over the country each Saturday where you can just bowl up and join in. There are all types of athlete, there’s no waiting around and a really jovial atmosphere. And better still, as it’s just 3.1 miles, it’s all over before you’ve even started - I was back home, showered and changed by 10 o’clock. Hmmm, I could become a convert to that…

And I’m telling you this because…

I’m running the 2012 London Marathon for the Hertfordshire Community Foundation (HCF).

If you feel inclined to sponsor me to help the Hertfordshire Community Foundation continue their great work, you can do so here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/BenWood2