Southwold 10km Race
The day had arrived for the much anticipated Southwold 10km race. This race is crazy hard to get into! Places went on sale on the 7th September and sold out in 20 minutes! Yes that's 500 people signing up in 20 minutes! So many people tried to get places and failed. For the second year running however I was lucky enough to get a place!
The reason for its crazy popularity is three fold and none of them seem to be running related. Number 1 - they have beer at the water stops during the race. Number 2 - along with a fab medal you get a can of beer in the finishers goody bag! Number 3 - there are some amazing pubs for post race debriefs. As they say most runners also seem to have a drinking problem!
The actual race starts relatively late at 11am! Mainly because its too early to drink beer any earlier! As many races in November the weather is not always on our side! Last year it was freezing cold and this year we were experiencing the tail end of a storm.Wrapped up in bin bags to keep warm we wandered down to the start.
The race starts at the bottom of a hill in a small lane where you can only fit five people side by side. Taking this and the fact approximately 500 people were running into consideration its not surprising it takes a little while to get across the start line! Luckily - unlike some other races the start and end of the race was chip timed. This meant that apart from getting cold at start there was no immediate panic to be at the front!
The course is two and a half laps. From the start you run down by the seafront and boating yard across a 1km and a bit of uneven terrain! It basically consists of pot holes, puddles, shingle and mud! All the things someone recovering from an ankle injury love to see!
Despite my initial concerned about this section of the course I took the advice of my fellow runners - tuned in on someone in front of me and follow their steps to avoid the pot holes! I quickly meandered this section and was back in the tarmac road in no time.
The course moves up towards the town centre of Southwold. This takes you on an initial steady incline before meeting a steeper slope up towards the water tower. Normally I would say this part of the course is the toughest, but this year the downhill section between the water tower and the seafront took us all by surprise. Last year I made up lots of time down hill but this year the tail end of the storm was blowing a gale right at us. It made this section really difficult - I could hardly catch my breath.
You can see from my STRAVA link that the wind seriously slowed me down and I got gradually slower throughout the race!
I was approximately two minutes slower than last year! I was slightly disappointed as I felt I gave it my all today! But post race I did realise that it had only been eight weeks since I was in A and E with my ankle and that I have only been back running for four weeks! In all honesty I should be proud I have still retained the speed I have and grateful I could run the race at all! From checking the results today I was chuffed though! I may have felt slow but I ended up being 72 out if 282 female runners. I think I am pretty ok with that!
For what was a relatively short race our outing to Southwold turned into a rather lengthy trip. Due to the popularity of the race there were so many lifers there! We had a good post race session enjoying some of the local beers and catching up on recent events!
We also had the compulsory visit to the Adnams shop who sponsor the race! This year they had a plack outside the shop with all the runners names on it! Naturally we all had to locate our names and have a few snaps taken before we purchased beer for the journey home!
Definitely a great day out despite the weather!