£50 is a lot of money to pay for a race, there’s no denying that. It’s more than most marathons are charging as an entry fee, so when the British 10K London put places on sale for exactly that they had a lot of work to do to make it worth runners parting with their hard-earned cash.

This year’s event was supported heavily by Nike, which meant no fiddling with safety pins to tag your race number to your vest – Nike had pre printed one of their Dri-Fit running t-shirts with your number and posted it out to you to run in. Charity runners and club runners keen to wear their own vests still got to use the old pins and paper method if they wanted though.

The route took in a lot of sights: starting in Piccadilly it headed to Trafalgar Square before turning down towards the river and going a couple of miles down The Thames before turning round and finishing on Whitehall. It was definitely designed with out of towners in mind.

Nike had clearly put a lot of thought into the event, including a lot of high-tec gadgetry. You could sign-up via some Facebook wizardry to let all your friends track you round the course on the day. they in turn could post messages of support that were shown on big screens round the route – though given that 30,000 runners were taking part, the chances of you seeing a message meant for you would be quite slim.

Music boomed around the course and in the notorious tunnel near Blackfriars where London Marathon runners go for a wee against the wall out of the sight of spectators, there was another surprise. Not the fact that a lot of men had got their hydration strategy wrong and couldn’t hold it in for a 10K, but slow motion projections of Paula Radcliffe and Mo Farah on the walls with sounds of crowds cheering.

That’s not to say that this was the only sound of cheering to be heard – throngs spectators equal to the number of runners had turned out to cheer on their runner and anyone else in need of support. It definitely had the big city race feel.

It had been a while since I’d last raced a 10K. More than 18 months in fact. That was a whole different type of 10K – a local club race around Wimbledon Common. I’d come looking for a PB but, unsure of my pace and how the other 29,999 runners would affect my race, I was possibly conservative with my estimate.

But I was lucky to start at the front which meant I didn’t have to wait to cross the start and had a pretty open course most of the way round. Further back, the lack of timing pens could have held up runners wanting to get a specific time.

This is a big, atmospheric run around one of the best cities in the world on closed roads. If you want a lot of support for your first ever race, then give it a go, but if you’re looking for a fast course to get a few seconds off your 10K time, there are a lot of other races out there that might suit you better. That’s not to say it’s not possible. I knocked more than four minutes off my time and went home very happy with my new PB of 46:58. Was it worth the price tag? The jury is still out on that.