Portsmouth Promenade 5k

Again I raced with a target in mind, and again I missed my target. This time though I was not disappointed as I had a great race.

The target was 20:00, one of my aims for 2007, which I'm sure I'll get as soon as I get the marathon out of my legs. I finished in 21:04 which I'm reasonably happy with given the conditions.

It was very windy! It was blowing a force 7, by my reckoning - not quite a gale but pretty hard to run into. We had much of the last 3km into the wind and it cost a lot of time.

My enjoyment of the race was saved though by my battle with Tina. I overtook Tina at the start, then she overtook me at 1km and I took her back shortly afterwards as we ran shoulder to shoulder round the Lido. She then took me at 3km as we struggled with the wind and she held the lead until the final run in. Helped by a couple of faster guys providing pacing targets I managed to get back to about 10m behind her as we weaved around the paths in the park. As we entered the final straight I still didn't think I was going to be able to catch her, but somehow I found an extra gear and pulled back 10m in a sprint for the line. I finished just ahead of Tina and turned what could have been another moan about weather conditions robbing me of a time, into a rewarding true run race.

Thank you Tina! I love this sort of racing and don't get too many chances to have such a close battle. I finished 2nd W45 which is far more important than the time as this is a 3-race series. I hope the rest of the series is as good as this one!


The splits:
3:54 147bpm wind behind
4:06 156bpm mostly behind, some buffeting
4:20 159bpm mostly in front
4:28 159bpm headwind all the way
4:11 158bpm some headwind

I think I paced reasonably well, but maybe I did fade a little in the last km as my HR dropped slightly.

I look forward to the next round in July where I will hopefully have a fresh, marathon-recovered, pair of legs and a proper crack at that 20-minute barrier (in windless conditions?)


We may have had a good team score as Gina finished ahead of me in 20:24ish (I think) and Sacha coming in behind me. We had at least 4 men running: Neil, Graham, Toby and Bob. Sorry if I didn't spot anyone else. Thanks to Marilyn and Kevin for their support.

The men's race was won by James Baker, with Sophie Morris of Windsor Slough and Eton winning the women's race with a time quite close to Lucy Elliott's course record - pretty good in such windy conditions.