Silverstone Grand Prix 10k – 04.05.16

Race Report by David Goodwin

As I left the sauna of the office and entered the relative oasis of air con in my car I glanced up to see the temperature hit 19 degrees. Aha, this is 5.15pm this can’t be right? It’s only like 3 days since we had the heating on full blast! However the weather was  “in for the night” and to the delight of BBQ manufacturers and ice cream men up the land the first glimpse of “summer” was upon us. Running in the heat – urgh.

Evenings are a funny old thing, sometimes you can just about muster up a crawl from the sofa to the kitchen for another drink before scanning TV channels for more rubbish, probably at a time way past your bedtime, but you have to make the Sky subscription work right? By watching all the channels at least once to get that value for money? I mean how did we cope before remote controls? I imagine the veterans of MFRC that are particularly nippy over short distances had years of training of being the channel change guy & in fact never really sat down a lot.  Or some evenings you can just put your mind to it and do something.

Tonight was a “do something” night, as I planned to meet my old colleague Kev at Silverstone for the 1^st of the East Midlands Grand Prix summer race series.  The great thing about keeping in touch with like-minded people is when you plan a catch up, you sort of have to go, even if you don’t fancy it. The talk before the run as we parked in the shadow of the pit lane was “I’m knackered” “busy day” “M1 traffic” “bloody customers” etc.  If you were to look in a mirror and say are we both fuelled correctly?, have we prepared ? well maybe not, but the numbers were pinned on, I inhaled a Soreen snack bar and off we went. Kev, ever the pro had an energy gel.

Having done the Silverstone 10k twice before and the half marathon twice I knew what to expect. The event (certainly the half) is running Marmite, many find the route boring and a pain to loop round, but for me I was well up for it once the gun went off. It’s the home of the F1 in Great Britain in 8 wks time the world will be watching, and we are running round here! Out of the grid we went at full throttle, despite it being a 10k I am a mile man and mile 1 ticked by at 7.56. OK that’s good I thought & the breeze refreshed us as we entered the perimeter of the course. Having seen Martin Smith and Joe Reynolds at the start I thought it was just the 3 Massey men in pole position, but after 2 miles saw Sophie in her new MF vest – we exchanged a breathless “hello” (classy & I’m sure this sounded great) and we ploughed on.

Halfway at 5k and the water “pit stop” I glanced down and was in need of not just 4 new tyres and some rocket fuel, but a whole new set of legs and some new lungs. The convivial chat from Kev and I had dried up and I knew this was now a race. 3 miles and my watch clicked at 23.52. Hmm, so my 10k PB of 51.42 from 2013 maybe in sight here. Mile 4 went by & I was blowing big time, the DRS zone kicked in (Dave Runs Slow) and I knew I needed to drop a gear to pull something out of the bag.

I sensed my wingman Kev had dropped off my shoulder, but knowing he can run quicker than me I weaved around the corner picking off runners as best I could in the last mile, the F1 boys do 52 laps for the GP, I was I need of an MOT after nearly 2! The finish gantry was in sight and I just threw the kitchen sink at it, thankfully no safety car to slow the pace and I let rip to the chequered flag – YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Wow wow wow, the shock of my watch, my first sub 50 10k and I was in PB dreamland.

So, I was glad tonight was a “do something“ night, sometimes the hardest part of any run is saying to yourself “I am going to do this“ getting the trainers on and opening the front door / going to training  / going to an event.

I am over the moon I put them in my car this morning. What a night!

1172 finishers on the night, a Silverstone 10k course record attendance