Stockport 10

My races since the Chester Marathon in early October have all been poor to middling performance-wise so I had no idea how 7 minute/miling for 10 miles would feel going into the race.

I certainly could not complain about the weather - dry, about 7 degrees C and a light wind. Perfect for fast running really.

As a warm up I jogged the four miles to the race - a bit far by most standards for a warm up but as I didn't have the car there was little choice!

The race started with one and a half laps of the track at Woodbank Park and then does a loop around Offerton and Bredbury before finishing back on the track. Hills at halfway and near the end make things interesting!

I started off at a steady 7 min/mile pace which felt ridiculously easy! After the field settled down I slightly increased the pace and worked my way through the field.

During the big hill at halfway I increased the effort and overtook a whole bunch of people. Then I pretty much chilled out again, gradually overtaking people one by one until the famous New Zealand Rd hill at the 8.5 mile point. This hill isn't actually that fearsome (a gain of about 140 feet) but as it is near the end of the race and keeps going on for longer than you expect it does cause some suffering. However I had enough in my legs to increase the effort and burn some people off.

From the top of the hill it is just half a mile to the end so I kept the effort up and ended with a fun sprint finish over the last 100 metres.

I finished with a time of 68:13 and every mile was under 7 minutes.

This is exactly how I like to run races - start steady and then overtake for the whole race. While this approach may not get me the absolute best time possible it sure is a lot of fun!

It is fair to say I was pretty chuffed with this run. Finally I noticed some concrete benefit from the marathon training in the summer and it looks like my next half marathon should be under 90 minutes.

Now let's see what up to 70 miles a week marathon training for 18 weeks does to me!