Glasgow Combat Stress 5k

An alcohol-less Friday night (first in a while, I'm out of money!) in preparation for today's 5k. Was hopeful of sub-19:30 to make a good start to the year.

Made the 8:10 bus out of St Andrews (£11 for a return, WTH) and got to Glasgow at 10:40 after surveying the best of Fife and the central belt (not, Dunfermline's hardly a holiday resort). Made a decent walking pace to Glasgow Green & dumped my stuff & got warming up.

It's easy to get lost warming up.

2M easy @ 8:26/m before changing into the Mushas for a final mile of 5k intervals. Averaged 6:20/m for them so I was confident of a good race.

This was termed a 'fun run' so there were tons of runners doing the aerobics 'warmup' as I finished mine (warmup, not aerobics). Got myself to the front as I knew there wouldn't be many serious runners so I'd be somewhat high up the field at the end.

The gun went and instantly 20 chavs who were running sprinted off like they'd done from the police the night before. I exchanged glances with the guy next to me (who ended up winning) before we set off in pursuit.

I was able to reign myself in and not get caught up in the over-enthusiasm and managed to get my effort going well off the bat. I use terms like '2-2 moderate', '3-3 hard', '2-1 easy' for racing efforts and 5k is a '2-2 moderate' kind of race for me. Went through 1k in 3:53 which was perfect timing, by which point I'd passed numerous gasping chavs at the side, probably throwing up their chips and gravy.

I think it's because of the river

It was this point that things started to unravel. I was still working hard and still at the right effort level but 2k was 4:01 and that was NOT part of the plan. It was flat and calm yet the legs didn't want to know. By now the lactic acid was starting to accumulate but less than 2M to go and I told myself to man up.

3k had a u-turn and a short drag up a dirt path which made life very difficult, by now the legs were starting to complain something awful. Was now running back the other way to focused on the other runners to take my mind off of things. 3k in 4:00 and accumulative 11:54.

4k had a nasty, short (30m) sharp uphill which I took the kamikaze option to power up like I was ascending Everest and this HURT. Looking now shows I hit my max HR during this portion and that is not a smart move with 0.6M to go. Now we could see the finish in the distance but there was still a short loop to complete before the final straight. 3:59, a pb was on but sub-19:30 was gone.

Final K had me facing off with the last remaining chav (how the hell did he do that?). I refused flatly to lose to someone who has probably been smoking before the start and did a 75-second last 400m to beat him, before  doubling over and almost retching (as I tend to do after 5k races).

HR trace from the race

Final time was 19:45, so an 11-second pb. Not exactly what I was hoping for but as I said the legs did not want to know about it today at all.