Spen 20 Road Race (20 miles, 1150ft)

Despite this being one of our own clubs 2 road races, I must confess that I've never really had the desire to enter it myself. This is for 2 reasons, (a) It's too far for me (b) Road running hurts my knees. However, having marshalled it for the last few years in conditions ranging from freezing cold to outright blizzards, and with the 3 peaks looming ever nearer, I decided that it would be better to enter the race, than miss another training session doing marshalling duties.

The race route is a bit of a convoluted figure of eight, where miles 5-9 and 15-19 are basically the same section.

My expectations were fairly conservative, I know people say that often to make an pre-race excuse, but in this case it's absolutely true. I'd raced hard the day before, and it was going to be my first road race since 2006. However, I'd mentally set myself a goal of somewhere between 2:40 and 2:50 even though I was treating it more like a tough training run.

The weather on the day was perfect, fopr the record field of 300+ runners too, although not too many from Spen. I counted 2 ladies (Jackie Carter & Hazel Pike) and 4 men (John Henry, Steve Hemingway, Naz Hussain and myself) although Steve and Naz were not wearing club vests. Also present was long-time Spen runner, and now K&C Steve Carter.

Chatting with Steve at the start, I soon gave up on the idea that running with him, deciding it would be foolish on my behalf, and that it might be better to try to stick with John, just for as long as it felt comfortable, but not get dragged into a race. As it happened I stayed with John and Steve for less than 2 miles before deciding to just do my own thing, and left them heading off into the distance.

The first 10 miles went pretty well, although I could already feel the cumulative effect of the previous days exertions, and by mile 12 it was getting tougher. By 15 miles I'd had enough, but still felt I could get round, so just plugged away. By mile 18, on the drag up to Roberttown I was reaching the end of the road, but knew that the last 2 miles were more or less downhill/flat, and that kept me going. I was pretty relieved to cross the finish line, and my time was 2:35:34 ish. John Henry was first back in 2:32 ish (I think). I figured he'd gone though a bad patch somewhere, since I expected to be much further behind him.

Now, just to show what a master of pacing I am (not) here are my mile splits, with the equivalent miles marked together for comparison.

Talk about fading badly eh!

Thanks to all the marshalls, helpers and supporters who turned out on the day.

Spen results
113 John Henry       M50 2:33:11
123 Chris Jones      M45 2:35:36
177 Steven Hemingway M45 2:49:31
215 Jackie Carter    F45 3:02:55
236 Hazel Pike       F40 3:17:13
253 Nazir Hussain    M55 3:41:05

258 finishers

Full results here