Plenty of friends at today's race, including a couple of ex Sparkhill Harriers club mates, one of whom, Dave, asked where I'd been and was surprised to hear that I was no longer a member (for the reasons I've discussed in earlier posts). Another friend, Helen, from Birchfield Harriers and Cannon Hill parkrun, had also heard the news, presumably from our mutual friend (who is also leaving Sparkhill, though for different reasons). Meanwhile, another friend, Jim, has been along to Sparkhill with a view to possibly joining them!
I had a race long tussle with Chris, a pal who runs with the host club, Centurion RC. I tailed him for the first mile or so, without him knowing, then pulled alongside, had a brief chat, and pushed on ahead. I knew I might not be able to keep him behind, and half expected him to come back at some point, but was prepared to try to share the workload and then see who had the legs at the end. As most of the marshals were Centurions and were cheering their club mates on, they unwittingly enabled me to gauge the gap I'd opened up, which seemed to be growing, but I kept the work rate up, partly to maintain my lead and partly because I was a little outside PB pace.
It was quite tough going because of the strong winds - several people I spoke to afterwards cited the wind as their reason for being a minute or so off pace.
With around a mile to go I started to hear the marshals shouting Chris' name again, so knew he must be closing. I did my best to power on and fend him off, afraid to look over my shoulder! In the end he was eleven seconds behind and, while I was 57 seconds off my PB, I bizarrely managed to clock exactly the same time as in race 3, last month.
Well, if I'm to get a new 5-mile PB this year I have a couple more races left in this series (I'll miss the April one, as if I'm not working I'll be up north for my mum's birthday) and there are also the Coventry Sphinx and Godiva races in June and August, respectively.
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