Giffnock 10k

Event details | Course elevation profile

I got a bit of an adrenaline rush before the race even started, when mucking around on my warm-up it looked like the race was about to start without me.  I needed a mad sprint to make sure I was behind the timing mat before the race was underway.  This slight bit of drama helped to get me off to a faster start than usual, and for the first 3km I seemed to be running better than normal, and was having a good battle with Paul Carroll who had been out of sight at all the Polaroids.  I thought this might mean I was on for 35 minutes something.

The other thing about the course was that a 5km fun run had used the same park, plus the 10k used a mix of smaller and larger loops, hence you were passing markers like 3km, 7km, 4km, 8km, 5km and another 5km until they only served to confuse you further. Towards 8km or so we were lapping dozens of slower runners, so it was quite a challenge to weave through them, whilst keeping an eye out for where the final kilometre split off.

For the last kilometre I was chasing Donald Cameron (Clydesdale) and an Ayr Seaforth runner, but couldn’t find any change in pace to close them down, so they both dipped under 37 minutes on what turned out to be a hillier course than I was expecting, whilst I was just over 37 minutes.