Lloyd Biddell

I had my breakthrough moment at this race last year coming a very unexpected 2nd but in very tough gale force conditions.  At the time I felt it was a near miss as I badly twisted my ankle as I was on my way to closing down the leader.  I wanted to try the race again and give it a go in better conditions and hopefully not twist my ankle this time. Lining up at the start I just felt very sluggish for some reason.  Sometimes it amounts to something and other times it doesn't.  However within the first km something just didn't feel right.  None the less I was reasonably well positioned, just behind a leading group of six and a few others just behind including myself.  After the first km I was in 10th.  After 2km we departed from the road and in the meantime I had picked off a couple more runners and I was consciously trying to keep off the gas as you can easily pay for too much effort in the latter part of the course.  The first thing that struck me was how muddy the course was.

The last couple of months of training have been a bit up and down.  I was starting to hit some good form in early July but then I started to develop some pain at the back of the knee and various other niggles which I've struggled to shake off.  As a result I've done very little focused sessions and have been trying to just get out and do some miles to keep ticking over.  Today's race was therefore a bit of an unknown. I knew that the Burton 10k course was very undulating and most definitely not a pb course.  The plan was to take the first couple of km easy as the climb was best part of 50 metres.  Over the undulating next 6km I then planned to gradually make a move and throw everything left into the sharp downhill in the last 2km to the finish. Course Profile As we set off I felt pretty reasonable and was happy to slot into 3rd with two runners about 5-10 metres ahead of me.  This continued for the first km and into a very sharp 30m hill where I purposely kept off