A tale of guns n’ chips, and no prizes….
During 2017 and 2018 I made a few fairly serious attempts at breaking 50 minutes for 10k. Now, to explain for any non-runner readers, whilst this has proven to be a real challenge for me, in general terms this is not particularly fast. The world record by a woman for 10k on the road (as opposed to the athletics track) stands at 29:14 (Yalemzerf Yehualaw, Feb 2022) In my running club the club record for the fastest woman overall is 33:12. More relevant to my own running today, our fastest club record for a woman aged 60 or over is 43:30. So 50 minutes could be considered positively pedestrian 😉 It’s all relative!
In February 2017 I ran the Dewsbury 10k race in 50:46. Very unfortunately it turned out the course was 200 meters too long, as the traffic management company had put the cone for the turnaround too high up the course, one side street too far. Running 8 minutes per mile means 200 meters would have taken me 57 seconds, so it seems quite likely I would have broken 50 minutes. Frustrated by this mishap I entered the Bradford 10k 6 weeks later and failed, running 50:52. Unlike Dewsbury, which is slightly uphill on the way out and therefore downhill on the return, Bradford, also an out and back course, is downhill out and uphill on the return, making it much harder both physically and psychologically.
The next year, 2018, I went back to Dewsbury and ran 50:28, a new personal best (PB). To try again for a sub-50 I went to Salford soon afterwards, another well-known northern 10k road race, always held on Good Friday. I had a disastrous time and stopped after 5k, the only race I have ever DNF’d (‘did not finish’). The course is 2 laps of 5k. I was on pace at halfway, reaching 3 miles in 24 minutes, but my mind suddenly gave up, I couldn’t figure out how to force myself to go round that rather horrible loop once more. The whole sub-50 minute target seemed very unimportant all of a sudden. And as soon as the mind gives in the legs just stop and say ‘thank goodness that utter madness is over!’ Looking back at my Strava record I commented “It’s not a great course, there were kerbs, lampposts and other street furniture to dodge, traffic and pedestrians. Even an abandoned washing machine. It makes Dewsbury look posh.”
In 2019 I did not make any serious efforts again in the 10k, in 2020 the pandemic intervened and then I got interested in ultra running. I thought the sub-50 10k quest was in the past for me, and I am of course 5 years older than when all this started. But a sudden rush of motivation came to me as I had been running relatively well by my standards, so I entered the Ribble Valley 10k in Clitheroe for December 27. The Ribble Valley race is always held just after Christmas, on fully closed roads, and is well-known for fast times despite being slightly (300 ft) undulating, and for a large elite presence. I had never even come close to 50 minutes there, having run it 3 times. This year the race incorporated the North of England road 10k championships so had a start line comprising some of the fastest men and women from the region (and further afield), with the first 9 runners finishing in under 30 minutes and the first 100 runners below 35 minutes (results).
It was pretty cramped with elite at the front. I took my place at the start with two female club mates at what we felt a suitable distance from the sharp end in order not to get in the way of the action. It turned out we were slightly too far back and I did have to spend the first half mile or so overtaking steadier runners, trying to be neither too timid nor too aggressive with my elbows. I did eventually settle into my stride and found my pace, and felt ‘good’ as much as one can feel good at 10k pace, so the time felt right to have another crack at project sub-50. I reached halfway only a few seconds shy of 25 minutes, but there is more downhill in the second half which I took advantage of for a negative split. By about 5.5 miles I knew sub-50 should be in the bag barring a last minute stumble, but it was still a struggle up a last small hill and along the finish straight knowing I did not have the luxury of much time in hand. I was over the moon to finish in 49:32, chasing down one of my club mates, having spent every last ounce of what I had to give. As is normal for me after a hard effort I spent some time dry-heaving over someone’s hedge at the finish line 😏
I had never in a million years imagined that I might win my age category (F60), as I said earlier, plenty of women over 60 run significantly faster than I do, especially in running clubs, and hence I had not checked beforehand if prizes would be awarded on gun or chip time. It turned out to be on gun time, ‘following EA (England Athletics) and UKA (United Kingdom Athletics) guidelines for elite races’ as the organisers kindly confirmed when I emailed them after the race to check. Gun time calculates every runner’s time from the moment the starting gun goes off to when they cross the finish line, chip time starts when you individually cross the timing mat at the start line. In many races this can be some considerable time after the runners at the front have set off, obviously depending on the size of the field. All but the smallest races now use timing chips (the technology has been in use since the late 1990s, more than 20 years), yet gun time is still considered by many, including the official athletics bodies, to be more appropriate. Purists see victory as belonging to the first person to cross the finish line, regardless of the fact that someone who started further back might have a faster chip time. It comes down to a debate between whether runners are racing against each other, or against the clock, in the latter case it could be seen as a time trial. Those who feel strongly about racing in real time generally want gun time preserved. Whilst I understand the argument in theory, and it would hold in ‘elite-only’ events, in practice in most races it is impossible, impractical and a potential safety hazard to attempt to start at or near the front as an older and necessarily slower runner. Ribble Valley had more than 1100 runners, they cannot all stand at the front, so it is going to take time for all to cross the start line. If prizes are awarded on gun time, including for age categories, then it means that runners like myself should line up with, or as close as possible to, runners who are going to take 30, 35 or 40 minutes over the course. As a result we would seriously be in their way, that surely is an undesirable and slightly ridiculous scenario? Can you see me lining up next to Olympian Jess Warner-Judd 🤣? By the way she ran 31:18 to set a new course record.
So whilst I was 1st F60 by chip time, I was 2nd by the gun and missed out on £20 prize money. I have never won any money in a race, so it would have been a nice thing to experience. The category winner was 11 seconds slower than I was on chip time, but 8 seconds faster on gun time. Oh well, small margins either way, and of course many congratulations to the winner. I have entered Dewsbury for February 2023 and will be pushing my way nearer to the front, as much as I dare without becoming a ‘slow-moving’ safety hazard!
