Déja vu: Brading 10k

One year on: the Brading 10k in the same hellishly hot conditions of 2005. Four weeks on: the same interminable hill as I ran in the Isle of Wight Marathon, this time in kilometres 6 to 8, but rather drier and hotter than last time! It was rather comforting seeing the mile 23 and 24 marks on the road as I struggled up the hill with my head about to explode.

No hope of a PB today in the heat and hills, particularly as I'd had a heavy week of training with no taper for the race. I just hoped to run a good race and maybe beat Ruth and Richard.

I had a pretty good battle with Ruth all the way. She led for the first kilometre and then I took over, feeling quite strong before the heat started to take effect. Ruth caught me on the big hill at 7km, but I hung on to her fairly well. As we hit the downhill section with 2km to go I glided past her. I thought at first that was it, and I could push downhill to the finish. Alas once more my memory selectively deleted the final hill. That came as a bit of a surprise to find myself having to struggle back uphill near the finish. Ruth overtook me uphill once more and held the lead to the line.

I finished 15secs behind her and I think one place behind her: I don't think any other women overtook me. My unofficial time was 45:43: certainly not a PB, but 3 minutes quicker than last time in very similar heat, so I'll take that as a good result.

I paced OK, but as my heart rate dropped a beat or 2 in the last 2 kilometres, maybe I did go off a little quickly.

Richard ran well, running shoulder to shoulder with me to 6km, then pulling away uphill, towed along by Pete who overtook us at that point. No team scalps for me today!

Blogs are by their nature very ego-centric. I can report on how my race was run, but I'd like, one day, to be able to report how the team in general got on. I'd love to get my reporter's notebook out at the finish, but when you're standing there wobbling about, just trying to navigate to the water table, to compensate for that sun-dried-tomato feeling, doing your best Clark Kent is not at the forefront of your mind - and I'm not talking about that pants outside tights thing he does!. I did once spot a woman, in a changing room, wearing her pants outside her tights - do many people do this? - very strange. Perhaps you'd like to leave a comment, anonymous if necessary, if you do this. Another changing room event recently, was that I spotted my first ever fake pair of breasts as the woman in the shower next to me turned to enquire about which showers worked. I wondered if gravity had momentarily decided to give Havant a wide berth - quite extraordinary! Should I be confessing this in public?

Where was I? Ah yes - feedback at the finish seemed fairly positive, with most having reasonable runs given the heat. No notes were taken.

Our ladies team did well, with Ruth, myself and Amanda scoring for the A-team. Unfortunately we didn't manage to field a B-team, with just Carol and Nicola dependable as ever. Come on girls, where were you? - it was a lovely day for distance running! ;-)

I haven't seen the results yet to know how we did, but we gained promotion back to the premiership (I think that's what they call the first division these days); this being the last race of the Hampshire Road Race League 2005-2006 season . It would have been nice to beat Overton and win the division, but Overton fielded their full-strength team and I think we were somewhat outclassed!

Winchester ladies were as ever unstoppable, with Michaela McCallum, Karen Hazlitt and Emma Patel finishing 1, 2, 3. I'd chatted with another Winchester woman Shirley Dyson-Laurie, who thought she'd had a bad race, but then found out she'd broken the W55 course record - well done Shirley! To get a course record in that heat is very impressive (although I'm starting to think it's always this hot at Brading in mid-June!).

I confess to not knowing how the men got on apart from Pete and Richard finishing just ahead of me - I guess that's part of the ego-centric nature of race reporting when all you get is your little bubble of experience.

My little bubble was a very hot and tough place to be!