Serpentine RC 5k - Fri 24th April

Having often done this race since 2006, I had gone 8 months without a trip to London for this regular last Friday of the month lunchtime fixture. I think I’d got a little tired of it, but the break had cured that and I was looking forward to the challenge again. This is a great little race (if not the fastest course). Only £2 for affiliated runners and you get your individual results emailed and mobile-texted the same day. They also track and graph your progress over the months/years in the event on their website. Great value, but the full cost is £24 if you include the train/tube!

Allowing for relative course difficulty (see Hill-ranking Table), my performance at Sandy 10M predicted 17:35 and Flitwick 10k predicted 17:47. Which performance would be the better benchmark? Either projection would be a PB, so I was feeling positive.

The weather was warm for April (about 16 deg), but quite breezy. Fortunately, the wind direction being SE meant that you were only running directly into it during km-4 . There was a bigger than usual turn out (about 20% up) and quite a few of the extra runners were at the fast end of the race.

I think this was the best I have ever paced a 5k and, as is normal for me in a 5k, I paid much more attention to pace than to HR. In fact, the main thing I tried to do was to maintain good form and stay as relaxed as possible - not always easy at full 5k effort. I think some of the recent NHRR training sessions have really helped me in that respect. It was good to see Chris Priestley (marshaling) and James Atkins (lunch-break) providing on-course support for myself and Martyn Annetts. Well done to Martyn for continuing his recent return to form.

So to my result - a very satisfactory PB (by 15s) of 17:38 and best ever age-score of 80.40%. 22nd place overall and 2nd MV45. That completes a very good week, with 10k and 5k PBs set on tough courses. This bodes well for upcoming races.