On a lovely Thursday evening last week I ran the Greaves Running Festival 5k. There was also a number of 1k races for kids and a 10k race for the more serious runners. I was entering the 5k as part of a 3 man team from my work (there was a prize for the first business team in the 5k). The event was really impressive with a mobile greaves shop, bouncy castles, ball swamps, giant slides, football/rugby training and a common finish lines for all the races.
After all my marathon training, I wasn’t looking forward to having to run fast but was quietly hoping for a pb and to go under the 20 min mark (my last and best 5k outing was 20:03). After a bit of chaos at the start, I got away from the pack and settled into quite a fast pace while learning to cope with the fact that kids half my height were still in front of me. I reached the half way point at about 9m30s and so pushed on as I was on target. Entering final stretch at 19min I chased the runner in front of me as an incentive to get under the 20, and passed her just before crossing the line in a time of 19m47s (12th overall out of 275 runners). Job done!
In the race bag, as well as the usual water and banana, there was a nice red Greaves 5k t-shirt, an adidas mug and an adidas money pocket. Sadly our work team was beaten into second by Sainsbury’s.
