NORHAM

Down at Norham today for their 10k.
Lovely route, but hilly and not a route for a PB. Met up with the other Dunbar runners who were going down and headed off for our warm up. I always like races that start in nice rural areas .... lots of opportunities to water the local fauna and flora!
Warm up over it was back through the village to the start line to get our instructions from Les and we were off.

This was my first race in almost two months and, if I'm honest, I was quite nervous about it. It's all good and well doing training runs and thinking your doing fine, but you never really know until you get out there and run a race.

Got a bit of a fright when I realised going through the village that I was in second place. Not my natural habitat, but the natural order of things was soon back in place as a few runners, including Grant, passed me.

At the first mile mark I was running with Darin Dougal of Moorfoot and by running together we managed to pick off a few runners until we were running fourth and fifth overall (Grant was in third).

And that was how it pretty much stayed all the way to mile five, at which point cooperation started to give way to the race instinct and we were trying to get away from each other.

Today was my day and I just managed to get away in the last 100m or so and claim 4th. My time of 37:00 was a bit slower than last year, but then again it was windier this year.

And because Grant was third overall first vets prize went to me.

Good runs from some of the other Dunbar runners with Susan getting 1st female and Mrs H getting first vet over 45. Ian was 6th overall as well, and that gave us enough for the men's team, while Susan, Anne and Jane got the female team prize.

My favourite type of prize too....cash. Fopp currently have a load of  releases on the Original Jazz Classics label on sale ..... "Hmm. Gerry Mulligan meets Johnny Hodges.....west coast cool meets mainstream swing... crazy, but nice".

Easy week ahead. Shorter distances and less effort than other weeks. Save the legs for the marathon next week. Might just do 5 miles or so at recover pace tomorrow.