Dulwich 10k

Well this race had been billed as the great showdown between me and my good friend Slow-Coach, however her 'Slow' billing is becoming increasingly less justified, whereas her 'Coach' billing is fully justified after the beasting I got at her hill session the day before.

Saturday was the aforementioned hill session. This was going to be a nice easy session in Greenwich Park, focusing mainly on technique.

Easy?

After an initial warmup, drills, and basic running technique work we took to the hills. 6 long steep repeats later and my legs were jelly. Then came the downhill technique work with some hair-raisingly fast descents and I was barely holding it together. So why did I choose that moment to try my steep downhill 'gazelle' technique? Ouch! The technique involves jumping each time your one foot hits the ground, then taking a quick tiny step with your other foot, then repeating the whole thing again. It has worked well for me on previous occasions, but I don't usually try it with jelly legs. As I came haring down the hill and hit the flat tarmac path halfway down, my legs buckled. I managed to miss the tarmac and rolled onto the grass, with what I think was quite a well controlled fall, but my knee hit the ground hard resulting in some bad bruising.

No time to wallow in self pity though as what came next was an uphill/downhill relay: teams of 3 passing a baton up and down a hill so that each runner does 2 uphill runs and 2 downhill runs. Great fun but incredibly manic. My knee was sore but OK to run on. It was good fun, but I was well and truly finished at the close of the session.

My thanks go to Slow-Coach for a great training session - really well thought out. It wasn't the best way to prepare for a 10k though!

I could relate the tale of an afternoon of culture at the Antony Gormley exhibition, but this is a running blog. Go see it though - it's fantastic.


And so to the Dulwich 10k. This is a low key event, part of a summer series of races for local London clubs. I was running as a guest. It's very informal: names are taken at the start, £1 is collected, you line up, run 3 laps of Dulwich Park and the pavements of the road around the outside, and remember to grab a cloakroom ticket as you cross the line, so that your place and name can be registered.

It was a lovely day. Both Saturday and now Sunday were hot and sunny. The park was beautiful in the hot sunshine.

Slow-Coach set off purposefully with me pacing just behind her. I would dearly have loved to just sit there and then outsprint her at the end, but I was mindful of the D-day 10k in 3 days time, and not wanting to overdo things. As it happened though I had no choice in the matter as my legs were not going to cooperate. That Saturday hill session was the culmination of several hard days of training and as I suspected I didn't have anything left. I was content to just leave Slow-Coach to pull away after the first lap and for me to cruise in a minute or 2 behind her. She was 2nd woman in around 43 minutes. I was 4th woman, if the shouts of support were accurate, in 44:46 - quite slow, but considering my average HR was only 142bpm, well below marathon effort, I'm quite pleased with that. I'll count that as a good marathon pace to threshold training effort.



Next up was the kids race. Slow-Coach Junior was running in this - what a fantastic run. He showed great maturity at the grand old age of 12. He let the others go sprinting away from him and then patiently reeled them in well before half way. He then pulled away from them and won by a huge margin. Brilliant effort. We were all dead chuffed!

I was tucking into a sandwich when I got a call to stand in on the 3rd leg of the fun relay. This was something of a surprise! I handed my sandwich over to the nearest available sandwich minder (tip: don't put an unwrapped sandwich in a rucksack with tracky bottoms!), and tried as best as I could to warm up and get my aching (and bruised) legs back in working order.



It was great fun! I've never run such a short distance: it was about 500m per lap, marked out by cones on the grass. It was such a close race. I took the baton in 2nd place for Serpentine and just about managed to hold the gap on the 1st place runner from Ealing and Southall. Our final runner was closing on 1st all the way round the last lap but couldn't quite close the gap. We came 2nd with nothing separating the 1,2,3. Another case of jelly legs for me, but such great fun.

A fantastic weekend!

Things that I've learnt?:

• Don't believe someone who says you'll be fine for a 10k as the hill session is a nice easy one focusing mainly on technique.
• Don't try out dangerous downhill techniques on tired legs.
• I look good in Serpentine red!