Helena Tipping 10K

When it’s a fast flat course and offering a tidy sum of prize money, you’re going to entice some cracking runners. For this race in Wrexham, there was the likes of Marc Scott, a former Olympian (28:27), and Omar Ahmed, who I’d once seen in the Chester 10K, when he and Jonny Mellor were duking it out for first and second place. They were on the return while most of us were still going out. This time he came second again to Marc but in a time just a few seconds off his personal best in 28:39. 

On the women’s side, I recognised the name of Sonia Samuels (33:47), who’d represented Britain in four World Cross Country championships. She was less than twenty seconds off Anna Bracegirdle (33:34), but then Anna is much younger, so Sonia still won her Women’s Vet 45 age group.

I came eleventh in my V50 age group. Zero prize money for me but I’m quite pleased with my effort considering the fact that last weekend happened. And it sounds more impressive than 410th which was my position in the whole field.

There was a pacer with a big 60 flag on her back who started off ahead of me. I passed her at around three kilometres, but she left me for dust when I was busy gulping down some water at the drink station after the halfway point. 

The temperature wasn’t quite as high as it had been over the last few days, but the humidity was up, and I was at the ‘slosh a few dribbles down the back of my neck’ stage. Deciding to walk and drink for the length of the station, my eyes flitted around for markers to delay my running even more, but as I passed the final bin for discarded bottles, I forced myself to pick up the pace again. 

I’ve just done an ultra, I told myself. And it’s really quite melty out here. Let that flag fly off into the distance, and just consider this race a good workout. Look, she’s getting further, once she’s around a corner, I can forget about the flag.

I did try to forget about the flag, but if you’d put me on the end of a phone, I’d get ‘dirty caller’ of the year with my breathing, so evidently I wasn’t trying hard enough. She wasn’t disappearing, and I really would have liked her to. Considering this race was only one-sixth of last week’s distance, I should have been having a ball, but every race, if your head is in the game, will be hard.

The kilometre markers seemed to tick off more slowly than they had last week, but the roads were flat and bland so there was very little to distract you from the pounding of your feet. I tried to eye up the people around me. Every now and then I’d catch up with someone, and then slowly managed to pull someone else in. We were all probably slowing but it appeared that some were slowing more than me.

The sixty-minute pacer still looked unreachable, but she still had not disappeared. I then realised that we were on the same road as the start, which meant that the first loop had been completed and we had less than half a loop left. For some reason, that gave me a little boost in the legs.

At six hundred metres to go, I finally caught up with flag lady. She urged me to keep pushing forward and I did, although my legs were teetering. As I crossed the line, the time on my watch said 59:55, but my official time was even better at 59:49. My running mate John, who’d I’d not seen since the start, cruised in at a little over a minute after me. And Ruth, who drove a pile of us from the club to the race, smashed her previous PB of one hour and fifteen by coming in at sixty-seven minutes. We had numerous other Pensbys way ahead of us, in the thirties, forties and fifties. So, a good day all around.

I was made up to dip under sixty minutes, considering my legs are still probably tired and I’ve not done much speed work this year. It’s given me an incentive to add some intervals in once a week. It won’t ever take me into the realms of the Sonia Samuels and the Omar Ahmeds of this world but I’ll carry on working on ‘me’ and exploring how far and fast I can get.