Swansea Bay 10k 2014 - my race review

Swansea Bay 10k 2014 

Swansea coast road - September 21st 2014 - website

My impressions from the day:Course: 9/10 - simple, flat, quick, well set out, great start area.
Marshalling: 8/10 - I didn't see many, which isn't to say there weren't any it just says they were doing an absolutely great job :-)
Facilities: 8/10 - after years (43 in fact) of organising and running the race the facilities are really good.
Organisation: 10/10 - Couldn't fault the overall organisation, like I said above they have good event pedigree.
Fellow runners: 8/10 - great atmosphere, people listened to the time binning in the start area,
Crowd: 8/10 - not the biggest crowds all round the route but they were very vocal and encouraging.
My performance: 8/10 (& 0/10) - pleased with my time and application. The second score was due to my apparent error of judgement in the last 200m (more of that below)
My time: 54:48

The start line - borrowed from the Swansea 10k facebook page

"Dude, can't you see me?? I am like right in the middle!" - borrowed from the Swansea 10k facebook page

My Race:

It started with a quick 2km - and so goes many a race failure... happily this one didn't end in a complete pacing mess. The start area was great, I managed the usual pre-race nerves induced loo break without much fuss (I was amazed the queues weren't too bad when I got to the toilet blocks), and got to the right start zone with no problems.

So I was ambitious, I figured go out at a target pace and then see if I can hold it. That was simply not going to happen, and so as the sunshine beat down on a huge field of runners my targets were beaten down too. The first two kilometres are nice and wide so there were no bunching issues meaning that I could try my plan without fear of blocking anyone off if the wheels fell off. Into the 3rd kilometre the bite began and it was obvious I had to reign in my pace and finishing target time, by the end of the 4th going into the Mumbles I knew the second half of the race would require a pretty big effort.

The turn around and drinks station come at or around the halfway mark, and so does the disappearance of the shade. The race starts at 1pm, so if there is sun then it is pretty fierce (for the UK at least). Going into the return leg along the prom the heat and the feeling of having put in too much effort in the first third of the race got into my head and started a bit of negative dialogue. Happily my pace didn't fall off horribly and I began ticking off the kilometres to the finish.

Telling yourself you can hit the final 2k and actually hitting the final 2k hard are two different things, the effort I was hoping to rediscover in the closing stages didn't appear and I simply held the pacing where it was. I managed to speed up a little, and going into the last 500m I thought I was on for a reasonable time after all. In the last 200m there is a rise and the path narrows slightly and as I gathered pace towards the line I suffered my lowest ever racing moment. I looked at the course, saw no space and opted to move onto the grass verge. This was fine, what wasn't fine was that the verge was of a sharper gradient than I realised and as I rejoined the tarmac I tangled with another runner.

Avoiding the near face plant to the gasps of the crowds, and seeing that I hadn't floored the other runner I carried on utterly red faced. I crossed the line in a good time, but felt completely hollow - had I ruined someones day? Waiting a short while in the finish funnel I saw them limping through with a friend, my heart sank even further through the ground beneath me even though the limp didn't look especially horrible. I apologised with a simple "sorry", there seemed nothing else that I could really say and from the look on their face nothing else that they would really want to hear. I can only hope that in the end their day wasn't as bad as I felt, I did not enjoy the aftermath of the race at all even though it was fabulously arranged. My wife and I went for a Joe's Ice Cream afterwards (kind of a Swansea race ritual), but even that didn't take away the feeling of a spoiled race.

I think the look on my face at the finish line said it all really - not my greatest day!

In the days after the race I began to unpack my thoughts around the race and the event in my finishing dash. Friends comforted me with sentiments along the lines of "these things happen sometimes", which I know is true but it only helped a little. I learned a valuable lesson in my 11th 10k race, and it is not something that will happen again in any race I enter. It was striking how one brief moment changed an entire day, especially when I was happy with every other aspect.

On a more up beat note, I suspect I will be signing up again next year as the event and its organisation is just awesome.

Breaking out of a running rut

30 days to go until my first autumn test – that’s right I have a 10k race in a months time even with my mojo still lost in the woods somewhere! Better than that from there I have a 'race' every other weekend until the end of September... it will be either boom or bust with my running mojo by the end of that period.

I am pinning a few hopes on the theory that immersing myself in things will help shake the junk out of my system and bring about a good autumn / winter of running and training in general. At the moment I am doing just about everything that any reasonable running magazine article might suggest to break out a rut...

1. Running for fun not goals.
2. Eating better.
3. Trying new things in running training.
4. Running with a friend.
5. Joined a club (I am stretching the definition to include the parkrun experience).
6. Building / changing routine (specifically by trying to get into a better sleep pattern).
7. Incorporating targets, such as races to shape and direct training.

Did I leave anything out that would also help?

Friday Fit-up(date) - a day too late

My Friday to Friday fitness activities log...

Fri - ran 3.80 miles - an easy pre-race run, during which I walked a couple of blocks to keep myself from doing to much.

Sun - Swansea Bay 10k - 51:32 a new PR.

Tues - ran 5.54 miles - slow and steady with a kick on the end, which was very pleasing.

Wed - Ergo three times 4 minute efforts - set a PR for this measure.

Fri - ran 3.86 miles of intervals (or what I am calling 'sprintervals' - I think you can see what I did there).

Weight - unchanged through the week.
High - new PR over 10k even though the weather was challenging.
Low - not managing to make more progress up the Concept2 challenge series leader-board.
Observation - Autumn is here as I did my first 'early' evening run in the dark for months.

Swansea Bay 10k - how my race went

Now three out of five race runs that I have entered this year have featured wind, rain and cold weather so I am now very much accustomed to it. In fact it is probably true to say that I would have struggled far more this year if all the runs had been in clear sunny (hot) weather - I very much function better in cool conditions, I am one of those people who in general has a warm constitution (I am a human radiator very often). So that it turned out the Swansea Bay 10k was my third race in cold rainy conditions didn't really bother me too much.

The preparation for the race in general went well, I got my race pack in good time and had all the arrangements for the day straight (travel, the kids, fuelling, kit and so on). The organisation of the event is just great as they have run the event there for many years and the arrangements run pretty much like clockwork - even in the bad weather. The immediate pre-race was marred by the death of our family dog on the Saturday night, he had a stroke and was euthanized as a kindness as he had lost so much quality of life to the condition. He was my first dog (though he was my wife's before I met her / them) and so I found it very difficult, as we all did. I will be at a loss for some time, and days will be very different without him around.

In the end I was running for the memory of our dog and I think he might have appreciated my effort if not my speed - he was a greyhound after all :-) I set off to hold a pace quicker than the Cardiff race two weeks ago, but not to go crazy and go too fast. It looked like being a bad headwind on the homeward half of the race so I didn't expect to negative split, and if anything resolved to run the first half hard knowing there would be a slowdown. The slowdown didn't come, and in fact I did manage a good negative split running the fastest mile of the race in the final mile.

Spot the guy in the orange vest! - I went with bright colours on a rainy day :-)

During the run two people went past me just after the first two kilometers that I resolved to follow, they were talking between themselves so from that and their running style I reasoned they were on a schedule similar to my own target time. I was cheeky in using them a hare to chase, but I suppose I took a leaf from my greyhound friend and went with it. In the last two kilometers I could see they were flagging and pushed on beyond them. I looked up their times afterwards and we had identical times as they must have been a little way behind me in the start area.

The Swansea Bay 10k proved to be my best 10k race thus far, I managed a small personal best beating my old officially measured time by 4 seconds! My time was 51min 32secs - I will go under 50min at some point I can feel it. I was very pleased with how my run went, how I approached the pacing and the strength I found over the last mile.

At the moment I am so very pleased with my bounce back from a difficult summer of illness, I feel like I am somewhere near where I was in the spring with pace and fitness. I am determined to stick with three intelligent runs a week as a basic week (one long, one pace, and one intevals), from what I read there are advocates for this sort of training and it will allow me to mix in other training (rowing and so forth). The work from here is to build a solid Winter base for Spring races and hopefully more PBs (PRs).

Next stop the Cardiff Half-marathon in less than three weeks time.

Wittering on Wednesday - including Tennis, legacy, heat, blogging and ice cream(!)

Special bit of wittering this Wednesday, Andy Murray has cracked it, in case you missed it (how could you) he won the US Open in a thrilling five set final against Novak Djokovic. The summer of shear joy for British sport just took another level step up, just when we all thought there was nowhere else it could go after Bradley Wiggins triumphed in the Tour de France, and the GB and NI team excelled during the London 2012 olympics. Phew, as a huge sports fan (aka TV sports-aholic) I am just about out of steam - I stayed up until gone 2am to hear Murray win on BBC radio.

Olympic bounce - local rowing legacy?

I ran into a former rowing colleague the other day who told me all about the apparent effect the Olympics has had on our local club, Llandaff Rowing Club. Each year an event called the "Pub and Club" is run which encourages teams of four from local workplaces, clubs and pubs to get together learn to row for a month culminating in the "Pub and Club sprint regatta". There were, I was told, queues down the stairs and out of the clubhouse door coupled with cars parked all over the place apparently during the initial sign up evening. As an event I know they will love it, it was my introduction to rowing and left me totally hooked.

Any sign of an Olympic 2012 legacy, or an inspire a generation, sports effect near you?

Bring the heat

I am trying, and I am not sure how I am doing, to mix up my running a little. Yeah I know my training log looks pretty much as it always has, but it belays a change in approach which is seeing more speed-work. For me speed-work is a relative term of course (closes mind to how fast the Olympians covered such distances), but having spent a very very long time running at and just below 10min/mile pace for greater and greater distances I have needed the change and gone looking for it. At the moment it is not especially structured with me doing one session a week (at a mid-range distance) with sprints or sustained bursts within it. Like I said I don't know how I am doing but I am certainly less 'bored' with working my way around every course at 10min per mile.

Wales Blogger awards

I have seen on other blogs mentions of the awards for Welsh bloggers (I first noticed it on the very professional http://www.girlontheriver.com/ blog via my twitter feed), unfortunately I don't read enough of them to give a real judgement about their merits but the short-list is a fun way of taking the temperature of blogs in this part of the World. Some I think will be retained as regular reads - more on those in another WoW perhaps.

Take a browse of the 'Peoples choice' nominees list if you like at http://www.walesblogawards.co.uk/peoples-choice-award/

Swansea next...

Not long now until I tackle the Swansea Bay 10k. I have to say I am looking forward not only to the course and a lovely day out by the sea with Mrs. Taffi but I am also looking forward to my Joe's Ice Cream. This is a family thing inspired by my wife's love of the ice cream that they concocted in their ice cream parlours, when we go to Swansea or the Mumbles (or anywhere vaguely close actually) we have to 'pop' in for an ice cream. Very good stuff it is too, and I am looking forward to a well earned scoop or three ;-)

Diary - sunny, shattered showers, modest breeze. I am feeling inspired by all things running at the moment, and reading loads of great blogs and magazine articles. Job interview later - which should be fun.