On Saturday I took part in my first Southern League race at the Mile End Athletics track. The running track was re-laid last year in time for the US Olympic team to use it for training during London 2012. It was springy, fast and is probably the best running surface I'll ever experience.
I was running on the same track that Justin Gatlin and Galen Rupp (who?) would have blasted round. Surely that would be enough to inspire a personal best? Sadly no.
Since joining Kent AC last year my running has been going from strength to strength and I've become used to setting personal bests every time I've run. The script didn't quite work out that way on Saturday. I was running in the 5,000m, off went the starters gun (quite exciting) and by the end of the first bend I was already quite a long way behind!
I just didn't feel like I could push and had to trudge round for twelve and a half laps on my own. I really wasn't a fan of count down on the finish line telling you how many laps you had to go, or the men with stop watches telling you your splits. I just wanted to to be over.
I got lapped too. Thankfully I also lapped a few other people, including one person twice, so wasn't the slowest out there.
I finally crossed the line in 17m 50sec, fifty seconds slower than my PB.
UPDATE: I was pretty disappointed when I finished the race and wrote this post. However, when I looked at the data on my watch, and checked my previous PB time, it really wasn't that bad. 17m 50sec is an average speed of 3m 33sec per km which is pretty good.
My PB is 17m 18sec, not seventeen flat. It wasn't the margin slower than I thought.
Even if it didn't quite go to plan, running on the same track as Olympic athletes is very cool!
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