So I haven’t been blogging my weekly training since the marathon, to be honest it’s not been very interesting. I am building up the mileage slowly and starting to incorporate more hill and interval sessions each week, but in a low pressure see-how-it-goes way. I’ll introduce some more structure soon, but for now it’s quite refreshing just to run take a break from heavy, goal oriented training.
Anyway, onto the main topic of this post, today’s Bupa London 10,000.
I ran this last year and enjoyed it, so was happy to be there again and this time with a free place courtesy of ESM. We had been given 12 places for the UKA 10k championships which were incorporated into the race, and also had the use of the British Academy as championship HQ. This was the first time I’ve had changing facilities with chandeliers, and Mo Farah 🙂
It was very hot (23°C) even at 10am when the race started so I was expecting a bit of a battle out there, but in the end the heat wasn’t too much of a problem. My last attempt at this distance was the Swansea 10k in September last year. I just dipped under 36 minutes then (35:58), and having been through hard marathon training since thought I could shave 5 seconds or so off if I concentrated, even in the heat.
The course is fairly simple, a quick dash through Trafalgar Square, onto the embankment then a few twisty turns through the city, back onto the embankment, a right turn at Big Ben, down Horse Guards then back into the Mall for the finish. This is pretty much the same as the Olympic Marathon course, which is only a few months away now.
My race plan was to go out at around 5:45m/m and just hang on as long as possible in the heat. I ran through the first 5k with Matt in 18:09, but soon after he drifted off the pace (he’d had a very hard week!). I felt pretty good considering the conditions and pushed on, actually speeding up for a 47 second negative split. Though I had to dig in a bit for the last mile or so, I felt relatively okay which was a nice surprise.
Finishing time 35:31 according to the initial results, a pb by a bigger margin that I’d thought possible 🙂
My watch said 35:28, which would obviously be nicer, being the right side of 35:30. I’ll wait for the official times to be announced, not too fussed though.
Mile splits – 5:44, 5:46, 5:48, 5:40, 5:37, 5:39
Garmin data | Official results
Stephen Elson 
June 3, 2012 at 2:42 pm |
Excellent running Stephen and a negative split too, impressive. It’s alway my plan to run a negative split but it never happens. Not in this distance anyway!