10k Time Trial.

  It's a bit of an odd ball race for me personally the Darlinington 10k as I am usually worn out by the time August arrives with too much racing. It's an excellent race, well organised , a good two lap course and a brilliant finishing straight in the town centre for a sprint finish.
  I was sticking with my plan before the race in that I would be targeting 34 minutes 30 seconds, I wasn't  feeling any pressure whatsoever and was looking forward to the challenge ahead. The wind was picking up so it looked like my target time was going to take some doing but seeing as there was a good field I was sure there would be a runner or two I could tuck in behind.
  The race got under way and this time I was well below my usual launch pace and in fact I would go as far as to say I was almost spot on pace wise. I missed the first two kilometre markers so I hadn't looked at my watch and for some reason I felt that I wasn't going well at all. The wind that I had thought would effect my race was in fact no hindrance at all and then finally I spotted the 3km marker and passed through in 10 minutes 18 seconds. Slightly ahead of schedule and with that my moral picked up and I suddenly clicked back into normal running

feeling. I then checked off each kilometre which is something I very rarely do in races but in fact it broke the distance down into nice bite size chunks. I was making it a very boring race for myself as I ignored the other runners around me and concentrated solely on my time between kilometres. There was a slight concern in my time between a couple of markers which didn't add up to my constant effort but I soon dismissed them because if that kilometre was long then the one before or after was going to be short. I should of gone for a sprint finish but in the end I just rolled over the line with the constant hard effort that I had been doing for the last 10k.  Finished in 25th place in 34 minutes 35 seconds. Five seconds outside my target so I'm more that happy with that, I will put the 5 seconds down to the wind and that would be a poor excuse at that.
  I will definitely be back next year and hopefully I will be back were I expect myself to be and that is under 33 minutes.