An exploration of one’s background fitness level, it turned out to be. So I’m not wildly excited by my time of 56:06, it’s certainly not the slowest I’ve ever run 10k, it’s also a long, long way from the fastest. The positive is that I didn’t train at all and in fact have probably been running only once or twice a week since the marathon in May. The nike+ graph shows the gory details.
Now it bears mentioning again that, I’m not built for speed. Nor am I particularly drawn to it. I get more of a kick out of running an exta 5k, rather than running 15 seconds per kilometre faster.
The event, also felt a bit ‘scrappy’. This could be because it was too “short and fast” (I know, I know) for my liking. Or… Now, I’m going to sound like a running snob here (with very little justification, I know) I also couldn’t escape the sense that the event lacked a sense of the camaradery that I find you get with half / full marathons. The course was certainly narrow but I also felt that there were people speeding up and slowing down, diving across in front of you and generally cutting you up left, right and centre the whole way round. As a case in point: The, er, stout gentleman in a cotton t-shirt and gym shoes who dilberately and completely unnecesarily shoulder barged me out of the way at the water stop so he could run through it without slowing down or changing direction, exactly on the racing line just made me think ‘first event’ and some other words I’m not going to write here.
The narrowness of the course in some places seemed to be a direct result of a desire to close as few streets as possible. Was it four or five times down PařÞská in the end? I know these events are very disruptive to the city but, well…
Enough whinging though. It was a great event, well attended, well supported and pretty well organised. It’s easy to get too used to how beautiful Prague is and the opportunity run through downtown and (repeatedly) through old town square at night really reminded me of some of things I like about this city.
I also got a chance to prepare for and run wtih a first time ‘event’ runner. I love doing this, it brings back to me the excitement of my first event and the pursuit of that feeling again, I think, is ultimately why I keep running events. So well done JS and I’m looking forward to next years Prague Grand Prix 10k!
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