Heckington 10 mile race 2023 + Marathon Training

A couple of weekends ago I raced the Heckington 10 mile road race with my better half ( Anna) for me the race didn’t go as I planned but you have to take the result and move on, sometimes you just get those races where you feel completely off and it’s the case of just finishing.

I was personally planning on dipping under the hour mark for this race, I felt in great shape and marathon training is going so well. The race always starts with 2 laps of a grass track then head out through the village and down the fen roads. I knew I felt off after the first mile as the pace I wanted to do felt so hard, I was really blowing 😮‍💨😮‍💨. The day was surprisingly hot wasn’t expecting that, very humid.

I seemed to find myself in my new marathon pace after 5k ! (6:30 pace ) so I locked into that and tried to enjoy the race, god I nearly stopped at half way, the course is 2 loops and when I got half way the thought of doing another loop filled me with dread !! Couldn’t believe how I was feeling! But one of the marshals on the day, Terry and old friend of mine saw I was struggling and gave me some encouragement and told me to keep it going, it seem to perk me up, I had to change my mindset on this loop and told myself just to finish with a good effort, I saw Anna on this loop, she was looking so so strong 💪🏻.

The last straight home couldn’t come quick enough, every time I tried to pick up the pace I just had nothing! So brought it home and got a time of 64:48 which was 1 min slower than last year and 3 min slower than i race at the beginning of the year, I ran a Half Marathon in March and reached the 10 mile mark in 61 mins, this is why I thought I could dip under the hour, but never mind we move forward 👍🏻😊

At the end of the race Anna and I looked around the show and bumped into this chap 😆

Anna had a fantastic race coming in 1:26 💪🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

As far as marathon preparation is going, that’s going great, seem to be hitting my pace targets well, did my first 20 miler on Monday, I split the run, 13 miles @ 6:50 pace then 7 @ 6:30 pace which is MP!