Dead Runners society race report
Stevenage 5km road race – sunday 27th
April 2001.
After all the track running we took
our track-trained legs to race on the road in Stevenage hoping for some fast
times.
Good Afternoon folks
Tony and Shelley here in Cambridge reporting
on this morning's 5km race in Stevenage. The two of us (especially Shelley) have
been concentrating on speedwork over the last 2 months with a lot of track
training and racing. We are both going a lot faster in training than usual due
to this speedwork, as you well know Shelley is going faster than ever with lots
of pb's recently. Even Tony has had some good short races recently, notably his
fastest 5km in 5 years (and first sub 20 for 3 years) last month in the "last
friday of the month" series in Hyde Park in London when he ran 19.35.
We saw the Stevenage 5km race advertised in
Athletics Weekly and it said that this course has "no speed limits" and that it
was the fastest 5km road race course in Europe last year. The course records
were 13.45 (Julius Kimtai, Kenya) and 16.00 (Bev Hartigan, 2nd british lady in
this year's London marathon). This looked too good a race to pass up, if we
could run fast on the relatively slow Hyde Park course what could we do in
Stevenage on such a superfast course being dragged round by such a fast
field?
So we entered the race and off we drove to
Stevenage, about 1 hour south of Cambridge. Shelley had run in and won prizes in
a different 5km series in Stevenage a couple of years ago but this was a
different course. As we arrived we saw runners on the course warming up for the
5km "B" race for runners slower than 21 minutes. It was raining when we arrived,
as usual off to the bathrooms which were in a cinema next to the finish area, we
stayed out of the rain in the cinema foyer, as we were stretching Sonia
O'Sullivan(!) came in to use the bathroom and to do her stretching, just like us
ordinary runners. Shelley got her autograph before we went out to warm up, there
were quite a few top runners here for this race. We were there just for a race
but Sonia and co were there to work. We met up with Glyn from our club,
Cambridge and Coleridge AC, we were hoping to have a few more from the club here
but there were only the three of us. Glyn is the road running captain of our
mostly track and field club, he usually trains at Tony's pace on club training
nights and Tony was hoping to have a good race with him.
As the "B" race for joggers and sandbaggers
(the race for over 21 minutes runners was won in 18.35!) was going on we jogged
round the course, it was 2.75 laps of a traffic free road and footpath course
for 5km. Rather twisty in places and quite a few ups and downs as the course
passed through some subways, it didn't look that fast! Back to the start, time
to take off our outer layers and then off to the start. There were a couple of
very fast looking Kenyans at the start, we both lined up at the back.
Tony's race:- Off we went, Glyn had got a few
metres ahead of me on the start line and zoomed off, it took about 30s until I
got past Shelley, pushing hard already but not feeling comfortable and it was
hard work trying to pass the runners around me. 4.08 for 1km :-( I was hoping to
be well under 4 minutes, I kept pushing hard, by now I was moving a bit more
freely as there were fewer runners around, past the finish line for the first
time, Glyn was about 50m ahead. End of lap 1 and then through 2km in 8.01/3.53,
I had passed a couple of runners but we were well spread out by now. Now for the
crucial part of the race, could I get to 1 lap to go before the winner finished?
3km in 12.03/4.02 and there was the finish line, past the finish in 12.40, if
Haile G had been running at his world record pace he would have lapped me but I
doubt that even Haile could run that fast on this course. 1 lap to go, I could
hear someone breathing down my neck but I wasn't going to let anyone overtake if
possible. 4km in 16.19/4.17, very tired by now but not long left, the heavy
breathing behind me was subsiding and I overtook a couple more runners. Round a
few more bends and into the home straight, the finish clock said 19.5x when I
first caught sight of it but I wasn't going to break 20 :-( As usual I finished
with loads left and crossed the finish line in 20.14, 3.55 for last km. I saw
Glyn after the race, he did the first km in 3.43 and held this lead over me for
the rest of the race, he managed to break 20 in his debut 5km with a time of
19.41.
Shelley's race:- The big news is, no pb this
time. It wasn't as fast a course as advertised, and I hadn't eased off for it.
My plan was just to see how long I could last at 20 min pace, but nothing of the
sort happened. I didn't start anywhere near as fast as I had planned 4:19 for
the first k, and even that was too fast for me. I think I was still feeling
Thursday's session of 25s 150s, because my legs were feeling pretty tired even
at the beginning of the race. But I still managed to keep from getting
lapped—just barely--as I was coming up for my last lap they were announcing the
leaders coming in, so I heard that nobody broke the course record. I was still
hopeful at the end of breaking 22:30, but even that didn't happen. I did the 4th
k in nearly 5 minutes, but got back on pace for the last k, crossing the finish
in just a couple of seconds over 22:30.
The highlight for me of the race, though, was
getting to talk to Sonia, because apart from simply being an elite runner, she
tends to be one I use a little as a role model, because she seems to be a
similar sort of runner to me. She seems to be meant mainly for middle distance,
too bouncy for marathons, but not fast enough reactions for sprinting. I was
just reading on her web page that when she was 11 everyone beat her in 100m, but
then she discovered she could run twice around the track. She seemed really nice
when I talked to her. I wished her luck and asked her if whe was going to try to
break 16, and she asked me if I knew what the course was like. I guess she
thought I might be local and have done the race a number of times. I almost
stole her boyfriend's pen, and he had to come after me for it. When she came
past us when we were warming up, I ran just a little bit at her pace, and I
think it was about race pace for me, but slower than race pace for Tony, I
judged it to be about 7 min/mile pace. She joined us again for a cool down jog,
and there were a number of men running with her, we think from her club. A bit
too late, I decided to make a good training day out of the bad race day and try
to catch up with her, but though I could maintain her jogging pace, I couldn't
catch up, but managed to run a pretty much constant distance behind her for a
good while. I would have continued except that she was going around another
loop, and I didn't want to lose Tony.
Encounters with world class athletes aside it
was a rather disappointing race for us, the course wasn't anything like as fast
as we thought it would be. The fast times on this course are entirely due to
prize money attracting top runners rather than the course itself being
superfast. Julius Kimtai won the race in 14.0x, just ahead of British olympic
runner Keith Cullen, Sonia won the ladies race but we don't know if she broke
the course record.
Our next race could be very interesting as we
are planning to run in another Watford open track meeting on wednesday over
800m! We have often wondered at what distance we would be equivalent in speed,
Shelley has got the basic speed and Tony has got the endurance, 800m between us
could be very close!
tony.... (and Shelley)
Dr Tony Bell Tony@shells.demon.co.uk Milton,
Cambridgeshire, England. http://www.shells.demon.co.uk/tonyweb.html
http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumList?u=227580
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