Leicester City 10k Race Day

January 29th, and my first race of 2023, going into this race I wasn’t sure what to expect from the race being deep in marathon training, but I felt in good shape so took the race as a pb opportunity. The morning of the race me and my girl (Anna) headed out from her house and made our way down to Leicester city to the start line, it was quite a fresh morning, but feeling good about the race and typical race nervous kicked in.

We both got our numbers from the collection point, and of course the usual toilet stop 🤭. Went off to do my usual warm up and drills. So started at the start and did just over a mile, a selection of drills and a handful of strides. Got into the starting area and looked around at the competition, the starting official ushered us to the start line, I was on the 2nd row, the wheelchair athletes went off first then the count down and we were off, the start was at a blistering fast pace ! I rained the pace in and kept myself in check as some of the guys went off way to quick, so I settled into a pace of 5:50 which was fine. Clipping along nicely, after the 2nd right hand bend I noticed this hill ! And thought “ are we going up that “ ! Thinking this was a flat course, anyway I worked up the hill and it levelled out and we took another right hand turn and low and behold there was another hill ! 😳 after getting to the top of this one I really had to switch my mine set from running a pb to just finishing and having a strong run. We then ran around the University and on approach to the Uni there was a pretty short and steep hill which really was a leg burner, going through the Uni we headed into Victoria Park, this was nice until the 180 degree bends kicked in ! Which just killed your pace, there was 2 or 3 of these bends around the park. Coming home into the last 3k was good cause it started coming back into the city and the last 1-2k was a slight downhill, the crowd support was building to, so at this point just gave everything I had left and got these little legs turning 😆, but the final right had turn came and I saw the finish line I kicked again and came home in 38:40, my 3rd fastest 10k of all time, 5th Vet 40 and 35 over all out of just over 800 entries.