Haddington 10K

Thanks to Bob Marshall for terrific action shots.

A smallish crew of Porties turned up today for the inaugural Haddington 10K. It being Haddington, home of the hottest half marathon in Northern Europe we wouldn't have been surprised if yesterday's freakily hot weather had strayed into today and roasted us. However, the weather was fairly kind and while it was a bit too cold for hanging around at the fair that was in full swing in Neilson Park. it was a nice temperature for running.

The course turned out to be truly undulating. It was a bit of a toughy, and there were a few stretches where there was a headwind. I was trying to take comfort from the fact that it wasn't the half - but my brain rejected this as being irrelevant. It was what it was. It felt more like hard work than poetry in motion.

A couple of miles into it I found my aims for the race. I wanted a "season's best" ( a nice way of not making you think how far off a pb you are) and I wanted to beat this damn HBT woman who had just sauntered past me. "If you were that fast you wouldn't still be behind me" I thought to myself and went past her. We swapped places again a bit further down the road - and I tried to hide the truth, which was I was going harder than I wanted to. I got ahead of her again and worked and worked and opened up a bit of a distance. By 8K or so I seemed to be leaving her behind. 8K onwards was pretty much all downhill to the finish. I kept working and got past a couple of men that had been ahead for a while. On the last fierce downhill I was aware that I had company again and was really hurting. A raggedy gang of Brown Shirts were crowing over the wall..."Go on Kristy - you can  beat that Portobello easy peasy!" Hah! I really didn't want that to happen. So I had to pretend I still felt strong. Oh it was a long way to the finish line at the end but half way along it she let go of me, though I didn't know it. I was mighty glad to stop and joined Kevin on the grass to lie down and recover.

Good game. Both aims achieved. I took 21 seconds off my Galashiels time, so although I'm still 2 minutes shy of a pb at least there's some improvement showing there. Willie was hard on himself saying he had a "very, very average run", having run the same time as Gala. Peter wasn't all that chuffed with himself but possibly should have been. It was just the big boys at the front took off far too fast making everyone else feel small. Michael Fullerton ran a pb so he was happy enough. Graeme Porteous said he suffered with heavy legs and didn't really get going til 8K so was a bit disappointed.

Medals, Mars Bars, no prizes. C'est la vie! Good day out.