BMC 5000 in Loughborough, 1st!
So the aim for the track running season was to dip under 14 minutes. I'm entered into the British Championships next weekend, but I thought that this might give me a better shot at running a quick time.
Got the train down this morning (9.30-15.50) which was ok but I was feeling a bit tired and tight when I arrived. Didn't really shake that feeling until I started warming up for the race but during my warm up I started feeling really good. My tactics were to try to stay in the lead group for as long as possible and hope I had the legs to stay on pace if/when I dropped off.
I started near the back and tried to stay tucked in as much as possible. Whenever I sensed a gap opening up ahead I moved to get ahead of the split and stay in the front pack. The pacing was great and I still felt good when the pacer dropped out after 2.8km.
The two Norwegians took up the pace for a couple of laps but they quickly started to get frustrated. With 1500m to go they both moved out into lane 2 and one of them gestured for someone else to come through and do some work. I felt good, and I didn't want to mess about and risk slowing down, so I went through and took the lead. I must have got a bit of adrenaline from this as I started to get a gap. From here I just worked as hard as I could, bouyed by the commentary telling me the gap was growing. I also worked out I was safely below 14 which gave me another boost.
On the last lap the commentators started to say that the gap was closing, and with 50m to go I risked a look behind - one of the Norwegians was right on my shoulder! I gave my best attempt at a sprint and just managed to hold him off.
So that couldn't have gone much better really..
2.46, 2.46, 2.46, 2.46, 2.41