A beautiful day yesterday for the Lasswade 10 mile race. It was dry, the sun was out, little to no wind and, while it was chilly, it wasn’t as cold as it’s been of late.
Got to the registration in loads of time, picked up our numbers, had a little natter with some folk, went for a wee warm up then made our way to the start where we met up with the other Dunbar runners.
Just over 300 runners, but it seemed like a lot more, and the start of this race can be a bit of a scramble. The Lasswade 10 is “undulating”. It’s very “undulating” and any attempt to get steady split times is doomed to failure.
Because I’ve done it a few times already I’m relatively confident about remembering where most of the hills are, how much energy to try and reserve for them and where to try and make up the time.
I knew that the climb out of “The Glen” is quite tough (between miles 2-3) so I tried to just blast down the hill into the Glen as fast as I could. Might as well try and take advantage of an easy mile. This gave me my fastest mile of the race (5:21) which I know under normal circumstances is way to fast for me and I could never sustain that speed for any length of time.
Found myself, not so much in a group, but running in a small strung out line of about 4 runners that included Wull Hynd of Moorfoot, a chap from Carnethy, me and a runner in a white “non-club” vest. Mr Hynd remained at the front of this line for most of the race while the rest of us jockeyed for position. I actually find the two miles or so after the bridge at Auchendinny and up through Auchendinny mains towards Rosslynlee the worst and the pace really slowed down there.
Once over that though we all seemed to pick up, but some more than others and the Carnethy runner started to pull away in the last couple of miles and just passed Wull. By about 8.5 miles though it was clear to me that I wasn’t about to make the jump and close the gap between us, but I still had the feeling I could get a fairly good time.
Just gritted the teeth and dug in, crossing the line in 59:43 which, according to the results, made me 17th overall and 3rd vet. So.. all in all, quite chuffed with that (new 10 mile PB).
However, that’s six weeks and six races and I’m starting to feel it a bit. Got the Inverness half next weekend (so that’ll be 7 in 7), so I’m going to try and have a bit of an easier week.
2 comments:
Congrats Stuart.
Sounds as though you had a good race.
John
Good run Stuart. That's equivalent to a 2:50 marathon, or a few minutes quicker on a flat course.
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