Springfield Striders Friday 5 - 12/06/09

Like running at altitude, running in Essex requires some practice. So to prepare for our trip to Chingford next week, I ran in the Springfield Striders Friday 5Mile (nr Chelmsford) on Friday 12th June. I did this race last year too and set my first ever NHRR Club Record on it. It’s certainly not the fastest course (although on pleasantly quiet rural lanes), but I had happy memories of it, so thought… what the hell, I’m feeling a bit tired, so let’s do another race! There were a few Spartans there too, so perhaps they also felt the need to get the feel of Essex? Either that or they also like having the finishing line right outside the Howe Street village pub?!

Another reason for doing a 5-miler now was that Cranfield 5 falls the day after the St Albans MWL race this year, so I thought I'd try and bank a good 5M time whilst I was in good form.


Approaching the finish >>>

Things didn't look so rosy Friday morning however. I had quite bad sciatica centred about my left ‘cheek’ which made it uncomfortable to bend down and shot occasional pains down my left leg. The last time I had sciatica was in 2004 after a spell of kamikaze treadmill workouts. That stopped me running for 3 months and it was 2 years before I put back on a pair of running shoes. After a hot bath and a few spells with the hot water bottle, things seemed to calm down a bit, so (sensibly?) I thought I’d travel to Essex and see how I felt after the warm-up.

The warm-up went OK. There was no pain, but I didn’t feel as loose as I’d have liked. About 2 of the first 3 miles is up-hill and by the end of that section I knew my target-time of 28:45 (a reasonable projection from my Welwyn MWL 10k time) was not going to happen. Perhaps it was the heat, but my legs were just not feeling up to the challenge. The final mile is mostly downhill, but I didn’t quite have the oomph left to make the most of it this year. Ultimately my overall mile-pace was actually slower than that in my 10k PB last week. It’s fair to say that you can’t be ‘up’ for a max effort every week, so hopefully I will be back on best form for Chingford.

Anyway, despite all this carping, my time was 29:07 (12th place – 1st MV45) - about 20s slower than I was hoping for, but 14s faster than my previous PB and MV45 Club Record. Statto is very stern task-master!