Raining on the parade

A lot can happen in 45 minutes: you could boil 15 eggs in a row. Iraq could have launched weapons of massive destruction at the West. You could run 10km. Well, I had never managed that, despite three valiant efforts previously, I had always fallen short in the 47m period. However, on a humid, rain soaked Saturday morning in Richmond park I finally beat the 45 minute mark finishing in a time of 42m 20s.

This time placed me 10th from 90 runners and 9th of the male runners. The race was won by a women in 38.23.

It was a diverse run (route here): undulating through paths for the first two kilometres then, heading mostly downhill, on a path running alongside the main road for the next two km before the final kilometre over grass back to the start / finish area, and the whole thing repeated for the second lap. Having set off at a fair whack I used the downhill of kilometres 3 and 4 to keep this speed before easing through 5 to 8, before pushing on over the last two km, again using the hill to kick the speed back up.

Having been aiming to beat 45m it was good to so comprehensively pass that time. However, on telling my time to a friend who had ran too (45.30) he said, 'oh, you could go sub 40 on a flat course; like at Clapham!'

Oh dear.