WESTONBIRT ARBORETUM 10K – Race Review – 23 May 2018

After reviewing this race in 2017, my intention is to keep this as brief as possible and, being honest, highlight the issued that I encountered on race day in the hope that they will be addressed prior to the 2019 event.

Although not as warm as last year - still a sunny, cloudless 18 degrees an hour before the race – the shade of the trees would offer a welcome relief to the runners who were beginning to gather in the car park.

The first challenge I faced encountered was the size of the queue to pick up my race number at 6pm. It was enormous and snaked seemingly forever along the path that led towards the starting area. Most people work on a week day and would have had to travel straight from work (as I did), so arriving an hour before the start time didn’t appear to be unreasonable to me. As I chatted to other runners in the queue, I assured them that this wasn’t the norm and hadn’t happened at the previous races I’d participated in at the Arboretum. In years gone by, it had been a relatively straightforward and painless procedure.  

I eventually reached the front of the queue that finished at series of tables inside the Welcome Centre 45 minutes later, when I finally picked up my race number. After pinning it onto my race top and nipping into the gents (thankfully no queue, although the ladies were having a fairly lengthy wait), it was 6.50pm. Whilst I’d got my pre-race tasks sorted out, I was conscious that there was still around an hour long queue of people who had yet to pick up with race numbers…and it was due to start in 10 minutes.

When I reached the starting area, it came as no surprise to me to hear that the race had been delayed by 10 minutes to accommodate the backlog of runners who still hadn’t picked up their race numbers. I quickly nipped to the toilets that were situated conveniently close to the start line, as I notice, did many others, and lined up again close to the starting pens to begin my pre-race stretching ritual and generally get into ‘the zone’, as they say in professional circles!

We were shortly then informed that the race was being delayed for another 10 minutes, which was actually nearer 20. At this point I’d got to the stage where I just wanted to run the race and go home as I’d begun to lose a fair amount of motivation and desire to actually compete…I don’t think I was the only person getting irritated either.

The race finally started around 7.35 and we were finally on our way. The biggest change to previous years was that, despite it being an almost identical course, we ran it in reverse. Whilst this made a nice change, it meant that the tougher half of the race came in the latter part.

I ran a strong first couple of miles and whilst the warm evening and lack of food in my belly was making me feel slightly uncomfortable, I began to accelerate going into mile 3. This was the split in the course between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ sections of the arboretum. This was probably my favourite part of the race although after the protective shade of trees over the first fee miles, the terrain became more exposed to the evening sun. The course had remained fairly flat up to this stage and as we reached what was probably the highest point of the course, we were greeted by an enthusiastic and vocal crowd of spectators cheering the runners on. They were situated close to the water station, which was a welcome sight on a warm and sticky May evening.

The crowd really lifted my spirits and gave me the motivation I needed to pick up the pace and charge down the hill (that I’d had to amble up in previous years!) as I posted a 7 minute mile.

After this brief moment of euphoria, the course became more undulating in places with a couple of short, steep climbs which were hard on the lets after a lung busting 3^rd mile. It began to flatten out again and at around four and a half miles a running friend, who’d paced the Stroud Half amazingly back in October, came alongside me. I chatted and ran with her for about a mile which helped me pick up the pace again and run a decent mile 5 of around 7.30.

I was finding the pace hard to handle as I entered the mile 6 and began to feel quite sick. This may have been a combination of the heat, lack of water and food, so I tried to keep my momentum going in the knowledge that I wasn’t too far from home now. As I urged myself not to be sick I actually heard someone stop and throw-up behind me!

As we ran beneath the tree-lined walkway for visitors to the arboretum and then up the final steep incline, my watch indicated that we were not too far from the finish and probably had about a quarter of a mile to go. However, as I frantically looked for the finish line, it wasn’t to be seen? We proceeded to run what appeared to be a large loop that would take us to the finish line and as my watch hit the 10K point I realized that we still had a reasonable distance still to run.

At this point I eased off, frustrated that the course was clearly long and due to that fact that I really wasn’t feeling too clever. It was completely out of character for me to go through the motions in the home straight as I usually relish the buzz the crowd gives me and the sense of almost completing a tough race. However, as I crossed the finish line I simply took my medal and headed straight back to the car park…not in the best of moods!

My time of 48.43 was a million miles off my PB, but when factoring-in a long course (6.51 miles, it would have been much more respectable over 6.22 miles. I was, however, pleased with my official finishing placing of 60^th out of 962 finishers, so that made me feel a little happier and lighted my mood (God, I sound like such a misery!).

It was interesting to see that there were 350 more runners than in 2017, so maybe the ambitions of growing the event could not be supported fully by the infrastructure and support available on the night.

I think the organisers need to give some serious thought to the issues they clearly experienced in advance of the 2019 event or many runners, like myself, will simply look at running other local spring races that are better organised in future.