Bluewater 10k

Contrary to what could be implied in the title I did not have a lavish shopping spree in some of the fancy shops in Bluewater this weekend instead on a glorious Sunday morning at stupid o’clock I donned my running gear woke up my taxi ride (sorry Laura) and headed the few miles from hers to the big shopping center.

From reading the reviews online perhaps we got lucky in knowing side routes into Bluewater, setting off at 730 and only sitting in a small queue of traffic it appears some were not so lucky stuck waiting on the A2 in a queue that could compete with Christmas Eve shopping traffic. By 8am we were parked and I was off heading for my usual pre run routine, namely queuing for the portaloos…sigh

Necessities out of the way and obligatory pre-run photo done, I set off for the start. Bumping into Sports Clinic Chris (would give a link but they have no website) on route was good to have a chat with someone I knew, he was quiet at the time but I suspect this wouldn’t last long and just after an hour after he should have clients trickling in. Start time was now approaching so I headed for the “pens”.

Being smaller in number to a few of the other runs the only restrictions in the starting pens was that women were one side of the road and men the other – not sure why other than it may make a nice photo opportunity. Both groups were started at the same time, and by 830 we were off, running down the road that you enter the shopping center on merging about 800m in at a roundabout.

I didn’t enter this course expecting to see sites, BW is built in a quarry and hence the biggest landmarks on the route could possibly be either the QE2 bridge or Asda . Sadly we didn’t get to run over the QE2 – something I would really like to do one day….Lakeside to Bluewater Run maybe heh. I was blissfully unaware of the hilly nature of this course. Looking at the reviews after most describe the course as undulating – “To give a wavelike appearance or form to”. This to me seems a fairly accurate description of the course, baring the hill at 5km which lasted best part of a 1.5km – that was fun but was over quite quickly with a descent to reclaim some of the time.

I ran a good time considering the conditions. The weather must have been in mid 20’s by 9am, sun fully exposed and also very hilly. According to the pdf on the run website I got the following stats:

Position: 354(2596) Time: 48:52.

This is a new personal best for me and to be honest given a flatter course I suspect I could knock of about 30seconds at least. The garmin also told me that the course was 10.25km, and according to the watch my 10km run time was 48minutes on the dot – see the splits.

What will it take to get my time down below 48mins, will I be able to do it by this time next month – how do people get below 48mins to 45mins? Is this something that is acheivable for me? Will be digging out my magazines and seeing what they suggest to pick up those extra minutes. Keep watching my blog to see my updates and whether in just under a month I can make a time sub 48minutes.