I think it is fair to say my head was not in the right place for Sunday's race. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it and had real doubts that I could achieve the same time as last year.
The Great South Run is the largest race I've ever taken part in with 25,000 runners lining up at the start. This causes one or two problems getting to the area meaning you do need to plan to be there far earlier than most races !
I was planning on meeting up with friends and running a paced race with them. But I ended up missing them. The queue for the loo was so long I missed the meeting time/place so I was running on my own…
My first mistake was starting too far forward in my start group. This meant when we did finally start I was running with people at a pace faster than I had planned. I had worked out to finish at 1:25 I needed to run at 8:30 min miles. My first mile was sub 8 minutes and I was trying to work out if I thought I could sustain this pace. Daft really when it is faster than my 10k pace ! I kept this up for the first few miles and realised that I couldn't sustain it; I still don't know why I thought I could ! I slowed down to my 8:30 pace but by then the damage had been done and I started feeling really rough. Looking back at the data my HR average over the first mile was 233….. and this does partly explain why I felt so crap. Between mile 6 and 7 I had to stop to be sick. I then needed to walk for a minute to make sure I re-hydrated and ate a few jelly babies to try and feel a bit better. The last few miles I managed to get back towards my goal pace but it really wasn't pretty.
I finished in 1:27, about a minute faster than last year but if I had got my pacing right I could have been faster and that bugs me a bit…
My next race is the Brooks Brighton 10k and that will be my last road race for a while. I think at the end of the day I've just done too any races in too few weeks