I first ran the Pride 10k last year. It is an event organised by London Front Runners, held every August. The race takes place in Victoria Park, and has become somewhat of a regular in my running diary, and I have already pencilled in the date for 2018.

I arrived at Victoria Park at 10:30am, in-time for the 11:00am start. This is a somewhat later start than usual running events, but as the race is run in its entirety through Victoria Park, there are no constraints with having to reopen closed roads (as with road races). After a quick 1km warm-up jog, I made my way over to the start line which is a further 1km walk from where the baggage tents/toilets are. The start-line was already packed to the brim. There were clear sign-posts for filtering into the start funnels, based on your predicted finish time. Optimistically, there were a lot of runners between 35-40 minutes. I made my way somewhere in the middle here. My intention was to run the race in around 39 minutes. Sub-40 was going to be fairly comfortable today.

We started on time, and it was a fast start. The course is almost entirely flat, making it ideal for a PB, or new runners who wish to avoid any inclines. I felt reasonably comfortable for the first 4 kilometres. From kilometres 4-7, I felt the pace slip a little. I received some mental boosts along the way when I saw Sania (twice) as this is a lapped course. I also received some positive motivation from Ciaran Canavan who came down to spectate. At kilometre 8 I felt slightly stronger knowing that the race is almost over, and picked the pace up for the final split.

I crossed the finish-line with a chip time of 39:16, which is probably about what I was expecting.

I personally find that I lack the drive to push myself in a race if I know that I’m not on target for a PB. But on a positive note my legs are feeling quite good, and I am enjoying my running once again, so it will be nice to slowly and steadily increase running milage. I was running around 50-60 miles/week when I was getting PBs, so am definitely not disheartened with my current times. But I digress.

After the run Sania and I went to Westfield (which I did not enjoy as it was super busy!) and had a quick lunch at Wagamama before heading home. Even getting my coffee at Starbucks took a phenomenal amount of time! But it was a good day overall. The goody bag was also okay and the bling was a nice addition to the growing collection.

My next race is the Barking ELVIS 6, which is a 5k. I did this last year in a gun-time of 18:15, and it would be nice to best this time. This race is on Bank Holiday Monday (28th August) so stay tuned for the race report for that! Until then…