Charndon 5k: Race report
Mild, probably around 18°C
From the big-race atmosphere and broad range of different runners – from elite club runners to fancy dress fun runners – of Sunday’s Oxford Town & Gown to the intimate, almost exclusively club-based, evening saunter through the quiet rural roads around Charndon. Contrast much?
As a grass-roots event, the starting line was roughly marked out and the finishing line was a make-shift affair. Despite this, the kilometers were well marked, so it wasn’t difficult to assess how much of the race remained. Although the steep-but-short hills in the second half of the race presented some pacing challenges.
I always find 5ks surprisingly challenging. They’re so all-out that I find it difficult to save anything for the final stretch. And so it happened for this race – I set off at a fair old clap, reigned it back in for the next three kilometers, all the time closing in on people in front of me, and then couldn’t manage a kick at the end.
Despite all that, it was a fantastic evening for a race, and I managed to secure myself a PB, so I can’t complain!
Lessons learnt
- Push into the hills, and keep it going over the top of them. There were some instances where I was pushing up a hill, with another runner in close pursuit, and I was able to make some gains on the way back down.
- Keep a consistent pace. Again, I fell victim to setting out too fast and dropping pace for each subsequent mile (see splits below). This is clearly something I need to work on. The irony is that I think I probably ran a faster first 5k in the Oxford Town & Gown 10k than I did in this 5k race.
Details
Time: 18:15 (PB)
Position: 39 out of 191
Note: Normally I’d list splits for each kilometre, but since the Garmin’s combined everything into miles, we’ll just have to make do with the information that’s available.
Mile 1: 5:27 (3:26 per km pace)
Mile 2: 5:49 (3:37 per km pace)
Mile 3: 6:12 (3:51 per km pace)
Mile 3.1: 0:40 (3:32 per km pace)
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