I had a really nice weekend up in my birthplace of York, visiting with family and friends, seeing a really good blues guitarist on Friday night with my ex, watching York City beat League opponents Hartlepool ('The Monkey Hangers'!) in a pre-season friendly and, finally, beating that 10km PB set back in 2009!
I always thought that PB time was a little suspect, as Bournville's Leafy 10 isn't what I'd normally consider PB course, as though not hilly it is certainly 'undulating' and quite a lot of it is on rough woodland trail.
It would have been nice to crack 40 minutes, but that was always unlikely on a hot day with over 5,000 runners in York's narrow streets. Those factors added to my delight at taking 68 seconds out of my previous best.
The start was held up for ten minutes or so, allowing late-comers to come down the course towards us before joining the throng. Apparently there had been traffic issues. Again. Car parking is a real issue for this event, and definitely requires more thought from the organisers.
As usual I tried to get further forward than I have in previous years, and as usual there were still many much slower runners in front of me, despite signs alongside the starting pen showing target times. It's so frustrating having to side-step people who stop dead in the first kilometer having gone much faster than they can cope with.
As you might expect from a city centre route in a medieval town, there are a lot of corners to be negotiated, and again the sheer numbers meant that every corner was a bottle-neck.
The course straightens out somewhat with around 4 km to go, as it leaves the city centre and follows the river Ouse, then it's over Millennium Bridge and there's only a few more corners before the finish on Knavesmire Road by the racecourse. This no doubt contributed to my 'negative splitting' - my second half 47 seconds faster than my first. Despite this, the four times I was overtaken (I think) were all in the last 3km, three in the last 500m. I was overtaking people throughout the race. A marshal was calling positions on the river bank around about the 7km mark (coincidentally near my old house on Frances Street), and I was 140th there, but finished 99th (81st by chip time).
All in all, I have to say the event was well organised and marshalled, but as is often the case with charity-organised races there were just too many runners.
I'm 'well chuffed', as we say in Yorkshire, with 40:38 in my first, and possibly only 10km race this year unless I manage to squeeze one in after Chester.
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