7.30pm, 6.2 miles, 49.15mins, ave pace 7.54m/m

Splits in miles: (pacepusher changed my GPS to km but didn’t actually change the auto split thing to km so no km splits which I was pretty disappointed with both during and after the run).

7.54m/m, 8.18m/m, 7.54m/m, 7.47m/m, 8.09m/m, 7.43m/m, 4.24m/km pace for 0.2m (randomly in km!!)

Placing:

395th overall

66th female

16th in age group

I had gone to Troon with no expectations whatsoever with it only being 3.5 weeks since London and having really felt the effects of the 11 mile run on Friday that I did.  I could not stop yawning before I started and with it being pretty warm (although I like that) I thought I would probably run around 52 mins.

Despite the GPS being set all wrong I could see that the first km was 4.54m/km pace and then just over 5m/km pace for the next couple of km.  I started to pick it up gradually after that and I know I was 25.01mins at halfway.  I thought then that I could get under the 50mins if I could just pick it up ever so slightly but I had no idea if my legs were going to last the whole way.  I did pick it up a lot and finished with quite a negative split in the end but I had to dig really deep from halfway for it and just took 1km at a time.  I was running about 7.45m/km pace over km’s 8 and 9 and must have been nearly 4.30m/km for the last km.  I was passing people the entire way which really helps me to keep the pace up.  At first I was mostly focusing on picking off other females but enjoyed it far more when I was seeing off more and more guys towards the end!

The last 2km went by really quickly, mostly because I was counting down the minutes I had left of running and from picking off the guys.  One guy and I were side by side from 8.5km and he obviously really did not want to get beat by me.  We kept passing each other and with about 400m to go he went off.  At 200m to go or so though I saw Mrs Crazyboy and my dad.  Mrs Crazyboy gave me a huge shout and spurred on by that I managed a sprint finish passing a few more guys, including I think the guy who had just gone off with 400 to go.  If I got him (there were 2 guys in blue t-shirts near me so not totally sure)  it was right on the line and I remember realising it was him and that I wanted to get him!  And I would not say I was competitive!

I could not remember what my pb was and so had to wait until I got home to check.  Unfortunately I was 5 secs over it but I am still really chuffed considering how I thought I was going to do and it makes me much more confident I can take a chunk of time off another time, hopefully I will find one at the right time to do before going to Malawi inbetween running/recovering from the Edinburgh marathon.  I had no thought of checking my pb time before I went as I was so sure I wasn’t going to get anywhere near it.  As pacepusher had said I am sure if I had known I would have managed to push on a bit faster, although I am not sure where it would have come from!  If my GPS had been set right too that would have helped as I was not actually sure what time I was going to finish in that last km

Caroline Gibson