At the weekend while some MRRs were running up and down mountains, some doing ultras, others doing well at the Archiestown 5k, I headed east to Longside for their annual 10 miler.
Having ran it last year I knew what to expect, 10 miles of rural, undulating road with a final few miles along the old Formartine railway line. In many ways it’s like the Miltonduff 10k, simple structure, no chip timing, about 200 entrants, rural, undulating, except of course you have to run about four miles further to get a cuppa and a piece of cake.
Those out running on Saturday will remember a day of a bit of sunshine, squalls of rain and a ferocious wind, all good fun. On the way to the start I was chatting to a younger runner who was doing his first 10 miler. I remarked that back in the ‘80s about half the races I did were 10 milers. My own first 10 miler was back in ’81 at an old aerodrome, think Kinloss 1/2 m but more boring. This was a few months after I’d run the inaugural London marathon, and I can still remember that at 8 miles our club captain passed me with nary a word, which annoyed me, so I hung on ….and hung … and hung on until in the final 1/2 mile he was constantly looking over his shoulder, but I was still there. I’d been ahead of him in London, but he was the better man that day and beat me by 5 or 6 seconds. Happy days, a PB for both of us.
Today, 1Oks have taken over. I’m pretty sure they hadn’t invented kilometres back then. No Garmin either, which without thinking encouraged you to develop a steady pace based on perceived effort and a glance at your Casio watch as you passed a Mile marker, frowning if your time was longer than planned but trusting your instincts that it was a “ long mile” and you’d pick up the time in the next mile.
My plan was to mirror last year’s race, start steady, aim for a negative split with a fast last three miles which are slightly downhill on the old railway line. I love the thinking and planning on the run in a race, there’s rarely a competitor in my age group close to me so I’m running against myself really, and planning 10 miles on the run is a new challenge when they don’t occur that often. The first two miles were into the wind, nice and steady, then 3 miles with the wind. I was running on heart rate and perceived effort but couldn’t resist a look at my watch when a mile time pinged up and although I was inevitably running faster than planned I reasoned that this was ok and would pay dividends for the inevitable miles against the wind.
At about 6 1/2 miles there’s a short up hill stretch and sharp turn onto the railway line, and it was now head on into the wind. The plan to pick up the pace now started to unravel, and to quote Mike Tyson “ Everybody has a plan until they’re hit in the face by a brutal wind ” . Yep, those last three miles were hard work as I slipped further back from the people just ahead of me to finish in 87 minute , about 70 secs slower than last year, how annoying ! Although I’ve somehow managed to lose 30 mins over 44 years as well.
Other plus points were a decent cuppa and piece of cake afterwards, a nice chunky medal and first V70 out of 3, no prize but it’s great that the V70 class is established at just about every North East club’s races with only a few exceptions . So a grand day out and one I’ll hopefully do again next year.
Report by: Phill Thompson