How a wonky GPS helped me to a 5k PB (in a 10k race)

“Where are we? Is this Cambridgeshire’s Area 51?” said Phil. We drove onto the Alconbury airbase (him, me and my sister Emma) where we’d be running the Huntingdon 10k. It was an interesting location for a run and one that we hoped, if nothing else, would be flat. It was Emma’s first 10k and I was hoping for a PB, so neither of us were keen to encounter inclines. Luckily, this part of the world is blessed with very few hills. But what it lacks in gradient, it makes up for in wind.

After a couple of trips to the portaloos we lined up to start – in the middle of the runway. Unsure where to place myself and hurried by the 5,4,3,2,1 countdown, I ended up in the front 10 or so people when the gun went off. Go!

I started running and waited for the first woman to catch me. It had been a long while (about 18 months) since I last raced a 10k and my legs were a bit confused by what was going on. I looked down at my watch for some guidance, but it was telling me I was clocking 8:10 per mile. My lungs said otherwise. Either my fitness had taken a tumble since Copenhagen or my Garmin was off. I kept running at an unknown pace and decided my legs could cast the deciding vote on what speed we went at.

After a few hundred meters the first woman went past. I’d looked at the results before signing up to help reassure Emma that she wouldn’t, in fact, be the last person over the line. I’d had a look at what was going on at the other end of the results too and saw that last year I could have reasonably expected to finish in the top 10 women. As the second woman went past, reassuring me that I wasn’t going too fast, I hoped that I could hold off any more than seven more women passing me.

My Garmin beeped to indicate what it thought was a mile and I listened out for the calls of others to confirm this, but they all stayed silent. We finished a lap of the airfield and headed out off across some fields. I wasn’t expecting: 1) gradients and 2) trail. We ran the next three miles over both. I should have 1) read the race website more fully and 2) worn different shoes. But on we ran.

Before long we came up to a sign that said 5k. I looked down at my watch which was (in its mind) still somewhere in the previous field, it said 22:16. I can’t remember running a 5k that quickly in a long while (though my 5ks usually follow a swim and a cycle) and I didn’t know whether to slow down or press on. I felt pretty good despite the ups and downs. In the next kilometre I went through getting a stitch, being overtaken by Batman, feeling I was going to be sick and then feeling better again. May favourite thing to tell myself in races like this is: “You can slow down, but you can’t stop.”

As we got to the last kilometre and headed back onto the tarmac, hopes of a 10K PB were gone. I was overtaken by a woman for the seventh time and now I just had my place to hold onto. The last kilometre was up a gradient straight up the runway and into a headwind. The finish took forever to come. “Why do they build a runway uphill? To slow the planes down I guess. It’s very inconvenient for people running 10k races on them.”

Alconbury is a US military base that’s gradually being decommissioned. I guess you can’t expect to get a good satellite GPS in places like that. I finished the race as 8th woman in 46 minutes. It was a much harder race than I’d been expecting.

I ran back down the runway to find Emma and Phil. But I’ll save the story of my sister’s race for another day.