Sunday 24 February 2019

Winchester 10k


This morning I ran the Winchester 10k.  My first race since the Loch Ness Marathon last September and only my 3rd 10k. 
We had beautiful weather for it, brilliant sunshine and not a cloud in the sky, but with an 08:30 start it was still chilly.  I was very glad of my long sleeved top and gloves. 
The course itself was lovely - through the town and then out into the countryside, before coming back into town for the finish.  A hilly run, but similar to what I normally run on, so no real problem for me.  And a very pretty medal to add to my collection.
But I couldn't help but feel the organisational side of things let the race down.  I didn't see any signage for toilets or bag drop at the start, only finding the loos by accident.  And there was a distinct lack of loos which made for a stressful start - would I make it to the end of the queue before the start?  Then out on the course itself I didn't see any distance markers which made it hard to work out how I was doing, and for a closed road race I saw a lot of cars. 
The end was just a shambles - I had to queue for 5 minutes before I managed to collect a medal, water, banana and t-shirt.  I'm not sure what the problem was but we weren't moving.  
The only thing keeping me from having a moan at someone was the glow of knowing I just knocked 5 minutes off my last 10k time - down to 50:22 which is amazing!  (this is my garmin time as the times haven't been published on the website yet) 
I'm thinking I might like to do some more 10k races, but I don't think I'll be going back to Winchester.

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