St David's Day Run...

The British Military Training St David's Day Run was an event (albeit the 10K not 5K) that Mr Taffi was going to enter before he broke his toe... It was only on Thursday, when I discovered that there were both 5K and 10K events, that I had an idea of entering it myself. My half-marathon training App had a planned training run for today (Sunday) so I thought "why not?"

It meant a bit of planning - preparing feeds for Monkey2 in my absence (it shouldn't have meant more than 2 hours out of the house but a grouchy monkey is not a happy monkey or a happy Mr Taffi, so best to be prepared), tracking down all my running kit the night before, and an earlyish start as I had to register immediately before the race.

I took with me my latest internet (Amazon, my fave shop!) purchase: new drinks bottle...

(I really did buy the two, though the green bottle got an outing today, and the blue one stayed at home!)
...my iPod Shuffle complete with Mark Kermode's film reviews, and my entry fee.
I also wore thin fleece gloves as the weather was lovely, but bitingly cold (very glad I did).

I left Mr Taffi home with a chickenpox'd Monkey1 and a sleeping Monkey2, and walked the 3miles or so to Bute park, and registered with the other late entries at the registration tent. A smaller turnout than I was expecting, but I think the larger entry was for the 10K.

I pinned on my entry number...

...selected my podcast, stretched a bit, and set off for the start line.

Once they'd freed a couple of trapped 5K entries from the portaloos we were off.

The route is all around Bute park, so fantastically flat and traffic free, and it was a lovely (if cold) day for it.
I can't say it was the best run I have done in recent weeks, but as Mr Taffi says, the experience is good - learning to run in a crowd, coping with waiting around in the cold to start, having to travel to the start line rather than set off for a run practically from the front door of home...and learning the hard way that I should have been to the portaloos myself before the race started!

I completed the race in 31mins18secs - not fast, but actually faster than training runs, and my km splits were fairly consistant. I averaged 10mins4secs minute miling (a stop to fumble with a detatched iPod shuffle tipping it over the 10mins mark...). All in all, a good baseline race from which to improve.

A good race, well-organised, good value (still only £11 for on-the-day entry) - and you get a medal and T-shirt (the latter a useful extra layer for the 3mile walk home!). The only criticisms - (1) not so much as a cereal bar in the goody-bag (a little sweet lolly does not count as food!), but luckily I had just enough money for a St David's day welsh cake from the coffee stall to keep the hunger pangs at bay until I got home...(2) a (nice but) generic medal without the event name and date...

Please see the panel to the right for an addition to my "planned events" to include this one (even though I could hardly call it "planned"!) and the gmap-pedometer route (which strangely comes out at 5.4km).

If you happen to stumble upon this blog, please comment and say "Hi" just to let me know someone out there is reading...!

Onwards and upwards...