Boscombe 5k

Our recent obsession for driving extremely long distance to run extremely short races continued on Friday evening when we went to Boscombe to compete in the second of their winter series of 5k events.

A white knuckle ride through the outskirts of Bournemouth (anyone who has been a passenger with Martin will know what I mean), a frantic search for first a parking space, then the race HQ and finally a loo meant that the stress levels were suitably high as we approached the start with time for only a minimal warm-up.

This is a very well supported event with about 300 runners and the route is out and back along the sea front. Before I did this race I thought the start at Street 5k was a bit of a zoo, now I realise that Street is a gentle and happy place to start a 5k! Imagine the scene, 300 runners set off at 5k pace on a narrow stretch of concrete beside the beach – my race was nearly over before it even started as someone hooked their foot round my ankle. Fortunately there were so many runners in close proximity there just wasn’t space to fall over.

On the way out the wind was behind us and after the first mad dash the field spread out and it was possible to settle into a good pace – until the first stretch of sand was reached. There were several places where large quantities of sand had blown onto the path and it felt like running through treacle. I had no idea of my pace, there were no km markers and it was too dark and too dangerous to check the GPS, you needed to be looking strictly where you were going at all times.

All of a sudden there was a shout up ahead of “runners on the right” and the leaders were charging back towards us – just at the point where the path narrowed! It was a relief to reach the turn around point where a marshal was calling out times (9.47) and turn back, but now the surge of runners on their outward journey meant that there was no choice but to run through the sand until finally the path widened again and only a few stragglers were still running against the flow.

I tried to draft as much as I could back into the wind but it was hard to find anyone running at the right pace and to my surprise I overtook quite a lot of people on the return leg. At last the lights of the pier came into sight and I crossed the line in 20.26, which I was pleased with given the conditions and which was good enough for 1st V45. Martin had run 18.51 to finish in an excellent 35th place out of 319 entrants, although he was annoyed to miss out on first V50 by a mere 12 seconds. From a comparison of results most people appeared to be around 30 seconds slower this month.

My first words were – “this is the most horrible race I’ve ever done and I’m never doing it again”. How is it then that after some excellent post race refreshments we were working out that actually we could do the December race as well……………………?