Event Five – Western-super-Mare 5 miler

This event is part of a series of events that take place on the beach front of Western-super-Mare between September 2015 and May 2016.

It’s held on a Thursday evening and I thought that it would be a good event to sneak in, in the week, freeing up time for more ….er…training …for …more….er….events! 🙂

Anyhoo, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Apart from the fact that I’m not an evening person – in fact the total opposite.  I’m one of those annoying people who jump out of bed around 6am raring to go, the flip side being that I’m in my PJs by 8.30pm (ok, ok, 7.30pm) and usually tucked up in bed with a good book by 9.30pm (ok, ok, 9pm).

This event started at 7.30pm dangerously close to me turning up in my pyjamas.  Good job I didn’t as it was cold, windy and raining.

My lovely daughter Zoe said she would come with me so that I had company on the drive to Western-super-Mare.  I was super grateful for this as I don’t really like driving in the dark.  I had asked a few friends if they would join me for this event but turns out normal people do things in the evening, like swimming and yoga and going out – who knew!

It’s an hours drive but with the M5 in between my house and the destination we had to leave plenty of time.  My last trip to Western was to drop daughter number two off at a party and involved getting quite lost which is actually hard to do given that the beach front is just one long road with the sea on one side – now that I have run it, I can attest to just how long!

Any way, as soon as we got to the promenade we saw runner type people, no getting lost tonight.  And being January parking was easy.

There were more people than I had imagined – for a cold rainy night – the January effect I suspect (the usually quiet pool at my gym is heaving at the moment – roll on February when things go back to normal).  HQ was in a large warm cafe and I got my race number.  As the event was only £4 and you can do the whole series for £17 I wasn’t really expecting fancy stuff like a race number – but I was glad to have one.  Mine was nicely printed as I’d booked ahead online – the people turing up on the night had their’s written in felt tip – mine was better lol!

I spent way longer than was necessary faffing about how many layers to wear – so warm in the cafe, so cold outside!  What a dilemma.  In the end I ditched a layer but wore a headband and gloves.

The start was just along from the cafe, the 5 miles involved two laps of the promenade – up/down/up/down/up??? or something like that – everyone I asked seemed to add an up/down and looked a bit vague – it didn’t really matter as I knew I would be at the back and have people to follow.  Many people were dressed in just a singlet and shorts…in January…yep!!! I knew I would be at the back.

….and I was.   From the first turn (up/down/up/down) I was about fifth from the back and I was running well, at a good speed for me.  The promenade was totally flat – I’m not sure I have ever run that far on the flat ever!  Even a 15k run I did in the Netherlands had bridges to liven it up a bit 🙂

There was some wind, so one direction was much cooler and a bit harder (but honestly so flat, I really didn’t care, I was loving the flat) and the other direction was a bit faster and warmer (glad I took that layer off).

Because of the whole up/down/up/down situation and despite being at the back, I could see other runners all the time which was nice.  My only concern was not to be lapped – which I managed although I did get overtaken by the speedy runners on their cool down lap – ho hum, guess my speedy pace really is slow!

Zoe was hanging out in the warm car (doing some Uni course work) and waved and cheered as I passed each time – so glad she came.

My goal was to get under 50 minutes and I scraped in at 49.48.  It was a lovely run by the sea although because it was dark I never actually saw it.

Five down – 45 to go!