Tag Archives: Crewkerne 10k

Crewkerne 10k: race report

by Ben

TL:DR summary: Not my best day.

I ran the Crewkerne 10k previously in both 2015 and 2017. A truly undulating road course that departs Crewkerne and visits the villages of Merriott and Hinton St George before finishing back in Crewkerne (a bit further in than the start!) In 2015, I found the hills really tough, while in 2017, I was far more at ease, but a bit off the pace still after the birth of our second child.

This year, I looked on this as one of my favourite routes. The hills were rolling, but no individual hill is too bad, and I felt that it played to my strengths: achievable climbs and fun descents. On the day though, nothing really felt right. I woke up feeling overtired (a theme all week – possibly my 19.3 mile, 3,500 ft long run last Sunday was still working its way out of my system). I got to Crewkerne and found the warm-up tough. It was pretty warm – not so crazy hot as the London Marathoners had it this year, but plenty hot enough. According to Garmin, it was 13.9°C in both 2015 and 2017, while this year it reckoned 20°C.

Now that I’ve got all my excuses lined up early, let’s cut to the crux of the matter. I started too fast. A fair bit too fast. I had looked at my splits from last year, reckoning that I was in similar shape (not thinking about the heat), and had seen that the first couple of miles came in just under seven-minute miles. Forgetting that the fact that the first mile has a climb followed by a long descent would mean that my time would improve throughout that mile, I pushed myself too hard around half a mile in to up my pace. My attempt to aim for a 6:55 mile resulted in a 6:40 mile. Sigh.

Unfortunately, this error was compounded by the fact that I didn’t even notice I’d done it. By the time I glanced down at my watch after passing the mile, it was showing a time in the early seven minutes, and I assumed I’d clocked through at about what I’d expected. A 6:40 pace might not sound too extreme, but Strava made it a 6:10 grade-adjusted pace, which definitely wasn’t going to be sustainable. My second mile of 6:57 was much closer to what I should have been running, but felt awful, as runners seemed to stream past me.

I set four Strava segment PRs during this race, despite being slower than last year. Three of them were within the first four kilometres of the race. I was a little surprised to find that one of these segment records came during the climb through Merriott. On reflection I guess it makes sense – both times previously, I’d felt like I was cruising this section, whereas this year it felt like a slog. I’d assumed it was because I was struggling, but in fact, it looks like it was because I was going too fast and pushing myself too hard.

By mile four, my pace was definitely taking a downturn though. I was really suffering from the heat. I’d trialled running with a cap to protect against the sun, and although it was working well from that point of view, it was just a normal cap, rather than a running one, and it was too thick. I eventually (around mile 5) gave up and took it off, but the damage was done by then. Matt Powell from Burnham (@no1mattpowell) was chasing me down, and although I managed to keep him behind for a time, I crashed on the final hill climb and had to walk, letting him through. Looking now, he had a brilliant finish anyway, so it seems unlikely I’d managed to stick with him even if I hadn’t been forced to walk.

Great honeymoon souvenir. Sub-standard running cap.

Somehow, I managed to set a PR on the “One Last Push” segment near the end of the race, but it didn’t really reflect how I was doing at that stage. I managed to sneak in sub-45, timed as 44:44 by my Garmin, 40 seconds slower than last year.

Next up, next weekend, is the Piddle Wood Plod 10k.

A race report catch-up: part one

by Ben

So, it would be fair to say that I’ve got out of the habit of updating the blog with my race reports. Well, to be honest, I’ve just stopped writing pretty much anything on it. Which is annoying, as reading my blog reports from previous years is one of my most effective pre-race preparations. This year I’ve raced 11 times, and yet I’ve only put up 4 race reports. Now two of those were Yeovilton 5k races, which I don’t tend to write up properly, but that still leaves five whole races unrecorded.

With this in mind, I’m going to try and summarise my thoughts on each, going back over some short notes I made at the time and the Strava report.

Butleigh MT 10k – 19 March

This was another “new to me” Somerset Series race for 2017. It used to be 7 miles, but this year they dropped it down to 10k. Unfortunately, to make it this distance, the race had to loop some fields at the start and end of the course, which wasn’t great – I’m not convinced that it is important enough to make a race 10k that this looping was needed. But whatever.

I probably, definitely started the race too fast on the initial lap of the field, but wanted to make sure I was in a decent position to avoid having to wait to cross the stile out of the field, which became something of a bottleneck for those behind. We then entered another field (there were lots of the them) which was extremely boggy. Everyone was taking different lines, trying to find some firm ground, but there simply wasn’t any. I ended up tight against the fence on the right-hand side, which I’d initially worried was electric, but it turned out not to be!

At the end of this field, the course rose up towards the road, though we didn’t actually run on the road, but through the trees alongside it. This was apparently the local fly-tipping area too, which a range of furniture and tyres on offer. It wasn’t great terrain to run on, but thankfully I was following another runner, so was able to keep track of the track, so to speak. We dropped back downhill into the fields after this section, and were helpfully warned by the marshal “Careful as you go, very slippy.”

Pack running

He was right – I slipped over. Thankfully it was all just mud, so no harm done, and I barely even lost any time on those I could see ahead of me. I picked up the pace a bit down the hill, but a little more cautiously than normal after my fall. After a short stint back on the road, we turned off it again and up hill. I was passed by another Series regular, Graham, (no surprise there) as we climbed up, but I went back past him once we headed downhill again. For most of the last two miles, four of us ran close together, our positions switching around a few times.

Graham’s course knowledge helped a couple of times, but I was leading the group coming into the last mile. Until the bloody “main” road crossing, when I got held up by a car passing, and the group caught back up to me again!

After a few more twists and turns (and the bloody pointless lap of the field) I finished in a reasonable (given the course and conditions) 48:01. More importantly, I was around, or ahead of, those I considered competitors in the Series.

Yeovilton 5k – 10 May

After Butleigh, I had a couple more weeks of good running before illness (a sinus infection) and the arrival of my new son stymied my running for a while. I skipped the April edition of the Yeovilton 5k Series, and returned in May. My hope was for a time around 20:15. Last year I peaked at 19:13 in September, but I was obviously going to be well short of that. Rightly or wrongly (the latter) I headed out at sub-20 minute pace, ticking off 3:56 and 3:58 for the first two kilometres. Then the wheels fell off; 4:12 for the third kilometre followed by 4:25 and 4:22. My body had just given up on me, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. I finished in 20:48, more or less equivalent to my time at this race in May last year, when I ran 20:44. So, if nothing else, I knew I was in roughly the same place, and so could improve back to the same place as last year.

Wambrook Waddle 10k – 14 May

Lani probably had as much fun as I did at this one!

This race came on the Sunday following the Yeovilton race, and so I was feeling a mixture of disheartened by the 5k result, and confident that hopefully if I had more or less matched my 2016 5k performance, I could more or less match my 2016 Waddle performance. Which I guess I more or less did. I opted to follow the Nigel Baker Race Start TacticTM, which I admit probably isn’t the best long-term plan. It essentially involves doing a race with a downhill start, and then absolutely pegging it down the hill. It was great fun. It probably killed my legs. Unsurprisingly, I lost a lot of places on the subsequent uphill, though I had plenty of fun dropping back down it again after.

In essence, this race was categorised by me not really being mentally prepared for racing in the Somerset Series “lower down the pack”. I saw those that I had previously raced around, but they were way ahead of me, and it was difficult to deal with. I probably had a reasonable race considering my fitness levels, but it just felt like a bit of a fail. But if there is anywhere to do that, it’s the Wambrook Waddle, which remains a gem of a course – impossibly hard for a race that is only 10 kilometres long (though in fact, most of the work is done in the first 5k, it’s just that your legs are completely shot for the second half.) Again, my race time was more or less equivalent to what I ran in 2016 (about 20 seconds slower.)

Wells 10k – 28 May

I did actually do a full write-up on this race, which you can find here: Wells 10k: race report. In summary; felt tough, but managed to equal last year’s time.

Crewkerne 10k – 4 June

This was the final of the more or less back-to-back-to-back Somerset Series races, which featured three 10k events in four weeks. This was a return to a race that I last did in 2015, when I found it really, really tough. The race starts with a steep hill climb, then drops down just as steeply, and then undulates until it loops back around to do that hill in reverse once again. When I did this race in 2015, I’d done about 1,800 ft of elevation so far that year. This time, I’d done 17,300 ft. It’s fair to say that I’m a bit better prepared for hills these days. In fact, the whole race only has about 500 ft of climbing, which isn’t unusual for Somerset Series races.

My time of 44:03 was almost identical to my Wells time of 44:02 the week before, and gave me a lot more confidence. For whatever reason, I just felt strong on the hills, and quick on the descents. Sure, I was still a distance back from the pack of runners I felt I should be with – I could see them for most of the first half of the race before they got too far ahead of me. But I’d come to terms with that now, and knew that I was running for myself, and working my way back to where I had been. Even if I wasn’t there yet.

Right, that’s enough for the moment. I’ll follow this up with part two later on; another go at the Red Bull Steeplechase, the Quantock Beast and my second Yeovilton 5k of the year.