The 15km "10k race" and my 5 minutes of fame..

Week 21 - the week just gone was a pretty easy one; just 3.5 hours in total. Finally managed to back into the swimming again. My local pool closed down so i was left high and dry (mostly dry!) for a while, but found a pool close to where i work that opens at 0630 twice a week, so that is good. I like swimming and met my brother James there. He's training for a triathlon at the moment and up till earlier this year he'd never swam front-crawl before! Fair play to him; he was doing well when i saw him in the pool last Tuesday.

So last Saturday night we drove down to Switzerland to visit our friends Gavin and Anna. They live in Basel and we planned to stay at theirs on the Saturday and then run the Basel 10km /Half marathon race on the Sunday. As i have the full marathon in Mannheim coming on June 8th i decided not to do the half, but to go for a PB on the 10km run.

We have a few beers the night before but nothing major, and i was feeling fresh on the morning of the race. Anna and my wife were running the 10k race too. It had been raining for the whole week but we were lucky enough to wake up to a dry, if cloudy day.

The race was goind really well and i was pacing myself good, feeling good. We even left Switzerland and went into France which was pretty cool! When the 10km point arrived on my Garmin i saw that i had done it in 54.06 which beat my previous by nearly 2 mins! I was very happy with myself. And then i realized that i was miles away from the finish line.....

Long story short is that at around the KM 3 mark, someone had done a clanger and routed the 10km people the wrong way! So every 10k runner ended up doing 15 KM to get to the finish line! it was ok for me as i could do the extra kilometers, but for those who had trained to be spent after 10km or people doing their first 10k race, it must have been hard. The organizers put their hands up to the mistake and offered a free place to all 10k runners in next years race.

It didnt really bother me as i was there just to do the 10 distance, so i pulled over at 12.5 km when i realized there was another 2k to go, to save my legs for the marathon. It was still a great day and good to see my wife back running races again.

My 5 minutes of fame came to me this week! i was featured in the "Mens Running" Magazine which published in the UK. They run a "Fat to Fit" article each month and this months was about me! I was very proud to be in the magazine and got lots of comments on my Facebook page about it!

Here is a snap shot of the article -

This week i have 10 hours to clock up, including a 2 hour run on Saturday and 4 hour bike ride Sunday...