Striders North Head & a new 10km PB!

I decided to give it a crack. Previous PB had been at North Head last September and it was 38:10, this was back at North Head again and I'm not sure why I'd been vacillating. Maybe because I felt that I'd be pressuring myself to perform when I wasn't sure I had it in me after Husky to go that hard. Of course in the end I told myself to harden up, got up at 5am and around 5.30 jumped on the bike to ride over to North Head.

It was a glorious morning, a crystal clear pure blue sky, very little wind and a slight nip in the air so absolutely perfect running weather.

I saw Paul (inhisshadow), Andrew and his running buddy Kathryn, big Ben from my McMahons Point hood, English Chris from Balmoral Triathlon club and my friends Luke and Jenn so it was a social morning at the start line. I lined up near the 40min pacer and suddenly they were shouting "GO!" and from out of nowhere we were away!

I had some trouble over the first km trying to weave my way through the crowd, looking for litle gaps to inject myself into and sidestepping and putting on little bursts of speed until I found some empty space. I saw Ben's bright red hair about 50 metres ahead and thought, I need to reel him in and try to stick with him, so I picked up the pace a bit and soon drew level. We stayed side by side for a bit and after 4km we were spot on 15 minutes so 3:45 pace.

At the turnround it took me a few seconds to get my pace back up again and Ben took off a little bit. The gap extended and to be honest I never got near him again, although I kept him about 50 to 80metres in front for the rest of the race.

I tried to pick it up a bit for the last 4km and had my heartrate up around 175-177 at this stage, doing little surges here and there. I had one bloke in a Striders singlet (who turned out later to be Superflake) running around the same pace as me and he kept edging past, then I’d push a little bit and edge past him and we kept each other going for the next little while.

With 2km to go I thought I was a very near thing to break 38mins by my watch, but I’d really have to go all out. I tried to turn it up further and with 1km to go a guy in exactly the same blue northside runners t-shirt as me drew level and passed me. I stuck to him and picked up my pace another notch but I was really at my limit now. He started to pull away just before the roundabout and then growled out of the corner of his mouth, “Come on mate!”, so I put in another burst and kept up with him but I was blowing hard. With a few hundred metres left I had maxed out my heart rate at 188 and could barely breath, so I had to just let him go.

I was pretty lactic by this stage and knew I couldn’t go for much longer, but I gritted my teeth and tried to sprint it out as best I could, crossing the line in 37:39 for a 30 second PB. I was absolutely stoked with that result, especially one week after going as hard as I could in the Huskisson long course triathlon, to be able to back up for a 10km PB was extremely satisfying. Great start to the weekend!

Andrew did really well, knocking a whopping 5 minutes off his 10km PB, also set at North Head in September last year and coming in just over 40mins. Kathryn was stoked as well, setting a PB for herself and getting in under 40mins for the first time (and quite convincingly too, I think she did 39:3x). Some bloke pushing a pram got the pram pushing 10km world record which was cool and there were a ridiculous amount of very fast people performing well. I came in at 60th which means there were a hell of a lot of runners in the mid to low 30s. And the Striders put on another extremely well organised and enjoyable race.