Dewsbury: another crack at a 10k PB
In December I wrote a post about breaking 50 minutes for the 10k after running 49:32 at Ribble Valley. The Dewsbury 10k, always held on the first Sunday in February, offered a good opportunity to try and shave a few more seconds off. The Dewsbury course is well suited to fast running, being an out and back along the main road, slightly up on the way out (it climbs 150 ft) thus naturally providing a negative split (i.e. running a faster time in the second half of a race) unless something goes really awry. There is no greenery, scenery or pleasant view to distract the mind from the single task in hand, which is to reach the finish arch as quickly as possible without totally blowing up in the process of doing so.
A good number of fellow Ilkley Harriers were there, 18 of us lined up for the 9 am start together with around 2200 other runners. Conditions were absolutely perfect, cool (my car’s thermometer had indicated zero degrees when I left home) but sunny, and without any noticeable breeze, we could not have wished for anything better weather-wise. I felt good, though nowhere near sure that I could repeat or even better my performance from six weeks ago. It’s always so hard to imagine yourself running at such a hard pace for a long time, even though you know you have done it before. At least, that’s how it feels for me. I had arrived quite early to ensure I could do a solid warm-up, I find my 60 year old legs really need a long time to get going, let alone perform at my race pace, and I also know that the ‘good runners’ always have very substantial warm-ups so if it works for them surely there must be something in it for me too as an average runner. So I had run about 6k before the start and done some drills and strides. Unlike at Ribble Valley I started not too far from the front this time, though having looked at previous years’ results I knew there would be virtually zero chance of winning my category as this race always attracts a number of women of my age who are very much faster than I will ever be. Still, as prizes here would also be awarded on gun time (I had checked!) I was not going to take any chances and anyway, being nearer to the front than the back does avoid having to jostle for your own space and thereby losing time, not good when every second counts. Downside is being overtaken quite a lot at the beginning, which you need to deal with psychologically, and potentially being in the way but I tucked myself in at the side of the road without any problems.
In advance I had decided to aim for 49 minutes. Helpfully there were pacers supplied for this race, running with big blue flags, but of course there is no pacer for 49 minutes. I could see the 45 minute pacer disappear into the distance and knew that if the 50 minute pacer passed me I would be in big trouble! Thankfully that never happened. So, running a 49 minute 10k requires running at 7:53 minutes per mile. A little unusually perhaps I always use the half mile alerts on my watch rather than miles or kilometres, so this equates to 3:56 per half mile. The half mile thing was recommended to me by one of our club’s coaches, Neil Chapman, many years ago and I have stuck with it ever since. The race had signs up at the kilometre points (as is usual in a 10k) so it gave my brain something to do, double checking the calculations of whether I was on track or not in both metric and imperial. Because the course goes gradually up first and then down again the splits are not going to be even, I had looked at them from my previous years at Dewsbury so I wasn’t panicking when most half mile splits on the way out were just over 4 minutes and I took the turn at half way in 25:03. I still felt ‘good’ and enjoyed hitting the descent, knowing I was on the way back and I could see my splits were on target as they ticked by. I ran the second half in 23:46 and reached the finish in 48:49 so had taken 43 seconds off my previous best time. Absolutely over the moon! Whilst I was running and suffering I kept telling myself (in between the calculations) ‘you don’t need to do this ever again, this could be your last 10k road race, so make it count!’ Of course, about an hour later I was already wondering which race I could do to try and get closer to 48 minutes 😂
I was 7th out of 51 women in our F60 category, and very pleased with that. Only the first 10 of us were under 50 minutes. Still, to put it into some very necessary context, out of the 18 Ilkley Harriers I was 17th! Lots of very fast running and plenty of personal bests for our club, including a new men’s club record of 30:07 by Nathan Edmondson who came second in this race.
Shoes: Saucony Fastwitch 9. Despite encouragement from running friends to get a pair of carbon plated road shoes I have not made the change yet. The high stack height puts me off, I like to feel the ground and racing flats still suit me fine. At least I have shown it is quite possible to improve my time without the carbon technology. For now anyway.
Harrogate Hustle Ultra
Just six days later and I have another Punk Panther ultra in the diary, my last one had been the North Leeds Greenway Ultra on New Year’s Day. February’s iteration was the Harrogate Hustle, a 36.2 mile / 2570 feet clockwise circuit of Harrogate and Knaresborough starting and finishing by the Harrogate Showground. A fairly straightforward combination of the Harrogate Ringway and the Knaresborough Round, two existing routes on paths through woods, farmer’s fields, along the river Nidd, and along some tracks as well as quite a few bits of road. 20 mile and 13 mile options were also available. I was delighted for the Punk Panther team that this race had sold out, with 200 runners across the three distances.
The weather was perfect, about 10 degrees and the sun came out as the day went on, it felt quite spring-like for the first time this year. Underfoot conditions were dry, and very different from the mudfest we had slogged through when I reccied the route a few weeks earlier, in sections, with my friend Gill. The route does not have a huge amount of elevation for the distance and is very runnable, apart from the sections in the Nidd Gorge which are amply supplied with tree roots there is not much to stumble over. This set me the challenge of keeping a decent (for me) pace going, I did find it quite hard as in all the 36 miles there are only a couple of short bits where I felt I had a genuine excuse to walk, therefore ‘compulsory’ running it was! In a way I found it almost as tough as a road marathon. I was glad that I had managed to enjoy looking at the landscape during our recces, which we had done walking rather than running, as during the event I was in definite ‘competing’ mode and more focussed on the task in hand than the surroundings, though I did notice and enjoy the snowdrops everywhere and even the odd crocus popping up. And of course I very much noticed, appreciated and thanked the lovely checkpoint marshals who kept me supplied with coke (the drink, not the other stuff!) and some much needed snacks. I mainly fuelled on my usual SiS energy drink and Turkish Delight which I carried myself. I did not stop to take any photos, so the ones included in this post are from the recce. There were no snowdrops yet then, you’ll just have to imagine them.
Thinking about it in advance, with runnable and fairly dry terrain and not that much elevation I felt I should be able to cover an average of 5 miles per hour, including the 4 checkpoint stops and any calls of nature required. I had never quite achieved the 5 miles per hour yet on these events so that was a nice goal to aim for. And that worked out very nicely, even if I say so myself 😉 Looking back at my Strava record I am pleased with the pretty metronomic pace I managed to maintain, I went through 5 miles on the hour, 10 miles at 2 hours, and the same all the way until I reached 35 miles in 6:58 (hurrah, job done!), just a mile and a bit from the finish which I reached in 7:13.
From mile 5 in Beckwith I ran all the way with a runner called Steve from Lincoln. The field had spread out quite quickly and I was running on my own, but we were thrown together after a minor navigational mishap of the party of 3 he had been running in, and somehow we stuck together without ever discussing it, we were evenly paced and enjoyed each other’s company without chatting much, and I probably had the added attraction of having the navigational upper hand as I had been able to recce the course. It definitely helped me to stick to my own target pace having someone else there to keep me accountable. Quite early on we discussed if we had a time in mind. Steve said, as we runners so often do, ‘well of course none of us are ever as fit as we would like to be’. I had to laugh, knowing I had just broken my all time 10k PB only 6 days earlier I couldn’t really wheel ‘lack of fitness’ out as any excuse should things not go to plan!
We started to overtake people at a regular rate from checkpoint 2 at Brearton (18 miles) and were not overtaken by anyone else. About 3 miles from the finish a runner called Faizal from Blackburn, on his first ever ultra, caught us up and we ran with him for a bit, chatting away which was nice and a good distraction from the fatigue which affected us all. We were on about 6 hours 40 and he hopefully asked if we could still run sub 7 hours which was quite funny, as I couldn’t even run 3 miles in 20 minutes if chased by a lion let alone at the end of an ultra! Though he went past us briefly he ended up finishing 2 minutes behind us after all. Steve and I put a bit of a sprint on in the last quarter mile as we spotted another runner ahead, game on! It’s all part of the very friendly ultra business, but we did go past him too! As in my last ultra in January, it seemed the right thing to go across the finish line together after so many miles in each other’s company, and we received the same finishing time.
Due to the field of runners usually being quite small I have managed to win the FV50 category a number times now at Punk Panther events (there is no range of age categories so it’s simply a matter of being below or above 50). Obviously that was another ambition to aim for on this event, but I knew in advance there would be significant competition this time. As always, I just told myself to run my own race as that is only thing I have any influence over. I had no idea if there were any women aged 50 or above ahead of me until I stole a glance at the list of runners having come through at checkpoint 3, where I saw that Karen Saward was ahead of me, but I did not know by how much. However when we reached checkpoint 4 at 30 miles I asked them and Karen was 20 minutes ahead of me. In a way that was a relief as obviously I could not make up 20 minutes over 6 miles so that was that, and I could just carry on at the same pace (which was hard enough anyway). Whereas if it had been a minute I would have wanted to try and ‘sprint’ which would not have been pretty or pleasant! I met Karen (a Hardmoors regular on her first Punk Panther event) over our cups of tea and delicious bowls of carrot and coriander soup at the finish, she had been teased by the race director that I would be cross when I arrived 🤣 ‘Wot, no trophy for me!?’ Of course nothing could be further from the truth, I was delighted for her. Though I have promised I will trip her up if she comes on a Punk Panther event again 😉!
Shoes: Inov8 XTalon G210. I have worn these a lot in previous races but had a bit of break from them trying out some other shoes. I was very pleased that I put them back on for this race. I felt so nimble and light on my feet. They are the equivalent of racing flats but for trails. The grip is phenomenal (not that I needed it for this event) and they only weigh 183 gr in my size 6. There is a move towards more and more cushioning in both road and trail running but it isn’t for me. I like to feel the ground, I am clumsy enough as it is when things get technical. Yes the downside is you get the odd sharp jab from a stone that you feel through the sole but I can put up with that. I did the Val d’Aran race in them last year and they were absolutely brilliant. The only time I have welcomed cushioning is in the second half of the Dalesway last year when I swapped from my rather uncushioned VJ Sparks (my other favourites) to the Inov8 Trailfly Ultra G300. Apart from liking the Trailfly in that situation they were an expensive mistake on my part (though I know popular with many runners) as I find them far too heavy (301 gr in my size).
