Dead Runners society race report
Serpentine RC "last friday of the month"
5km- friday 28th January 2000.
5 days after the half marathon we went
to the big city to race 5km around Hyde Park, one of the great parks of central
London.
Today we went to London as I had an appointment with Torben, osteopath to the stars as well as Shelley and I. Torben has been treating Shelley off and on for the last year or so and I went to see him a couple of weeks ago as I had a problem with my knee. Torben did his poking and prodding and made my knee a bit stronger by correcting some things in my back, my knee didn't hurt much during the half marathon. Torben worked me over again and said that my knee seemed better. Then off we went to Hyde Park, one of the great parks of central London where Serpentine Running Club put on a 5km race every last friday of the month. Shelley ran in this race in November so we decided to both run this month. We paid our £1 entry fees and got our numbers, I did about 10 minutes jogging to get warmed up. The race course is around the Serpentine, a lake in Hyde Park, hence the name of the promoting running club. They had a staggered start with all the runners who thought they could run sub 21 minutes going off first and the slower runners going off 5 minutes later, Shelley did the later start. Off to the start, peeled off most of my layers and did a bit more jogging before the race started. I lined up at the back.
Off we went, didn't try to go off too fast and gradually worked my way through for the first km or so, by 2km I was running into the wind by the lake in the company of an old man in blue, still passing the odd runner but we were well spread out by now. We passed a man in yellow just after halfway before the old man in blue sneaked ahead not to come back. Working hard but didn't feel comfortable, just before 4km the man in yellow came back just before we got back to the start/finish area. There was still a little out and back to go, this was OK until we turned and had the last 500m or so back into a very strong wind. I slogged in through the treacle to the end, couldn't raise much for the finish. Crossed the line in 20.30, 10s behind the man in yellow. Tired on finishing, that was tough at the end but I never really felt that I had got going properly, the lack of distance markers didn't help. After running 20.31 on New Year's Eve in Sacramento I was hoping to break 20 today. I put some more clothes on and did a little cool down jog as Shelley came in, she finished in just over 24 minutes and was rather disappointed with her run. It was very cold and windy though, there was a bit of ice on the Serpentine so conditions weren't ideal. We will do better next month I think.
Shelley Walsh and Tony Bell
Milton Cambridgshire England
Tiger@shells.demon.co.uk
Shelley Walsh Shelley@shells.demon.co.uk
http://www.shells.demon.co.uk/index.html
Tony Bell
Tony@shells.demon.co.uk
http://www.shells.demon.co.uk/tonyweb.html
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