Lloyd Biddell

Today was another 10k and this time I thought I had a reasonable chance of beating my 2008 PB time of 34.35.  A couple of weeks earlier at the Ramathon Half Marathon I went through 10k in about 35 minutes so I was sure that I must at least have a pretty good chance. I entered the Wythall and Hollywood 10k, a fairly small race and mostly geared to raising funds for their charity.  There were actually two races at the same time, a 5k loop and then a second loop for 10k runners.  As a result it was going to be impossible to tell what position I would be in until the second lap. Start I tried to start relatively easy and after 200 metres I was 10th, quickly moving into 8th and then over the remainder of the first km I moved into 5th.  I knew the second km was uphill although to be honest I didn't think it was all that bad but I knew from my watch that I ran the km about 10 seconds slower.  I was still 5th and about 10 metres behind fourth and third and about a further 15 metre

Whilst I've done a few 10k and off road races in the last few months I wanted to test myself on a half marathon to see how I fared on a longer race.  Back in 2007/08 I did four half marathons but always felt I never really cracked the event with my time of 1.20.29 being pretty poor considering my level of fitness back then.  Roll on 2016 and I was not sure how I would do as I've done relatively few races in recent months so didn't have much to benchmark against.  I knew that barring a total disaster my pb was likely to be broken and when I entered the Ramathon I put 1.18 as my estimated time.  In all honesty though I thought circa 1.15 might be a possibility, but then so could 1.20 if I had a poor race or seemingly not being as fit as I think I am! As I was in the front pen I knew I would get a reasonable starting position and I started a couple of rows off the front and try to get into race pace straight away rather than legging it with everybody else.  After the first 2