Doug Anderson 5k - Bedford Park

 

Statto

Wasn't sure whether to do this given I gave my all in doing a HM PB on Sunday and the FVS 3k relay yesterday. Legs felt OK, so I thought I'd just see how it felt and race accordingly. It felt great for about 4k and I was on track for a PB time of around 18:13 (I thought).

However, I'd misjudged where the finish was! The course is 2.5 laps of Bedford Park, finsihing with a dash down the centre of the park to the finish line. There was a clock on BOTH sides of the finish arch and I'd seen one of these before the start, thinking the finish line must be approached from where I was standing - WRONG! In fact you had to go much further around the park and approach the finish from the opposite direction.

Thus, thanks to my delusion (and seemingly oblivious to the km-markers telling another story), I'd been running at near near HR-max way before the end, with inevitable results. When I neared the point where I expected to be turning right and sprinting for the line, I noted that everyone was continuing straight on! The realisation of how far was left to go (prob about 850m and most of it going up) made my heart sink, shortly follwed by my pace. So despite my HR continuing at about 99% of max for the last km, my mile-pace for the last km was 20 secs slower than any of the preceding 4

Still, despite the very warm conditions, it being my 3rd race in 4 days, and mis-pacing the race thanks to my brain placing the finish line at 4.1k, I still managed my second best ever 5k time of 18:33 (my watch). I'll take that as a positive sign!

In the right weather and when feeling fresh, I think this could be a pretty fast course. Having said that that, it scores quite high on Statto's elevation gain/mile charts (19.2), so might be deceptively challenging like Serpy.

Nice little race really, no frills, but effective orgainsisation by Bedford Harriers and in a very pleasant setting.

PS/NB: - all the HR analysis happened after, not during the race!