It felt like it took a while, but on 7th July I got to the final 10k race of my summer speed training block!
I wasn’t expecting or trying for a PB. I was already delighted with my 48:57 at Sunderland in May – I’d never expected to get sub-49 this year – and so I felt like I’d achieved everything I wanted to at this distance for 2024. Besides, the GN10k is a difficult course these days – a downhill start to the river (the same downhill start as the GNR) that of course needs to come back up as we travel through town and return to the Town Moor. Then of course there’s the horrible gravel section at the end that slows everyone right down. It’s not the best race and I expect I’ll be taking a break from it for a couple of years (though I may still make use of the very convenient running shoe recycling point that they provided in the race village on the Moor).
Nevertheless, I was hoping for consistency, as I’ve been doing around 50 minutes for all my 10k races this year. I was delighted to be in the orange wave at a Great Run event for the first time in my life (the fast laddies’ wave, as I used to think of it when I was stuck at the back in pink) and I wanted to enjoy it. Once upon a time (2016) I came last in this race out of thousands of people. It’s been a long journey.
It was a long walk down Claremont Road from the race village to the start – much longer than expected – and so it was a bit of a tight thing to get into the pen before the race started! That was probably a good thing, though, as I hate all the hanging around and the mass warmup. We were off before I knew it.
I decided not to stick with the 50 pacer on the downhill to the Tyne, as it’s really a race where you have to use the hills. I knew he’d catch up with me at some point. I was impressed that we had enough room on the Tyne Bridge for the out-and-back, as they’ve been doing long-term works on the bridge – a tentatively good sign for the main event in September, I hope.
The many twists and turns on the route meant that I often saw friends going in the other direction, which was a nice distraction! It started to get really tough in the second half with all the deceptive hidden uphills and then the gravel paths on the Moor. The 50 pacer caught me with about a mile and a half to go and there was no way I could stick with him, so I knew even before I finished it was going to be a season’s worst. 51:17 was the result. Still relatively consistent and over 10 minutes faster than my course PB from last year, so I’ll take it.
A bit of a party atmosphere at the end, and it did really feel like the end of a season!
I won’t do as many 10ks next year – probably just one or two. I was starting to get race fatigue this year, and I’d like to come back refreshed to some of these races in a few years’ time. Hopefully by 2025 I’ll be excited to take on the distance again!
In the meantime, though, I’m back to marathon training (for Yorkshire in October), which really is my happy place at the moment. Looking forward to getting some peaceful long runs in.