SMC 5k

Date: Sun, Oct 18 (7:00am onwards)
Conditions: Mild and humid, periodic sun breaks
Location: Sydney Marathon Clinic, Smithfield/Wetherill Park
Session: 16 minute warm up (guessing 3.2-3.4km), 5km race 18:03, 10km 44:32. Was supposed to be 2 hours. Oh well.
Sleep: 6 hours. Scratchy early, fine later.
Feeling: Pretty good. A little lower leg soreness that went away after the warm up, no effects from Wanda yesterday morning.

Out to Smiffo for the 5k race. After chatting to the 21k guys, got through a reasonable warm up and felt pretty reasonable at the startline. Target was around 18 mins, if not better.

John Dawlings pointed out one of his fellow Woodstockers and said he was around 18 mins as well and said I might be up for a race. Great, another pirahna in the tank!

I wasn't overly concerned about Gary from the previous month as I felt I'd had a pretty solid couple of weeks and my speed was coming back. There seemed to be a few more quicker kids this month, though.

We started and sure enough Gary bolted along with the pack of kids, the Woodstocker (Dave?) going with them. I hung back, knowing the climb of the first kilometre was a good opportunity to burn some bikkies too early. I picked Gary up within the first five hundred metres, and set to work tracking down Dave. The kids, five of them, had bolted.

I drew even with Dave at about the 1km mark and eased past him down the short little downhill section there, and concentrated on form and making good speed down the hills past the busway.

Hit the turnaround at about 19ish (I forgot to check the watch, only seeing it a bit afterwards) just behind Uncle Dave who was doing the 10km and saw I'd drawn a reasonable lead on Dave. I felt pretty solid and discounted him coming back at me, setting my sights on one of the kids, in an orange singlet, who had fallen out of the pack in front. I thought I was half a chance, until about 500 metres from the finish, where I realised he'd picked up and put some distance into me, and I would have to be happy with where I was placed. Sixth outright in 18:03 and another age group win. Winner did 16:58.

Would have been nice to be sub 18 but the time is about where I think I am at the moment. The kids up the front are running the kind of 5k times I need to be doing, so they're going to be both a good target and a good yardstick in the coming months. I'm convinced that if I can get up close to them, it'll be worth 10-20 seconds getting dragged along. This has given fresh motivation to really go after speedwork, so that's a good thing.

Got out straight after the 5km to run another 10k, following the SMC 10k course. Ran a solid 44:32 with a 2 minute negative split (I was dogging it over the first kilometre) and amused myself running down guys in the middle of the half marathon field. Sorry if that seemed cruel, but it's not the most interesting of courses and I really didn't want to plod out the extra distance at 5 min per km. I think I might have picked up Johnny Dark in my wake.

So, now I know roughly where I am. Bit of work between now and the Striders 10k in three weeks time and I should be sub 37 again, and then onwards to the Central Coast half.