John Gilmour Track 10000m

36:34 - pretty much a par effort on predictions. PB offically by a minute, although I've run the first 10k of city to surf(12k) and Run4aReason(14k) in sub37 this year

I had a little scare at 4am Friday when I was woken by a calf cramp. I'm lucky in that this is only the second true cramp I've ever had, but boy are they painful. After the minute or two of stomach-turning pain, the upper calf was sore all day. Luckily this didn't affect me at all whilst I was running. It was pretty sore afterards though.

Had a 3k warmup with B'Man then did 2 laps with a run through down the back straight. My legs felt flat so I stopped it there.

The field was pretty impressive, and almost immediately 2 separate packs formed - the first dozen then a gap to my pack which I was near the front of. Unfortunately the guy in front of me pushed the straights then propped on the bends, a pattern which continued for about the first 4km. I ended up running wide quite a bit. Luckily when the main pack passed us he tried to go with them, burnt out, and fell back behind me.

I started 82/85/84/85/86/88/88/88 (3k in 10:38) and maintained 88s til halfway in 17:58 - just where I planned to be.
From 5-8k I slipped to 90 sec lap averages, slowest 91, and was a bit in no mans land as I waited for B'man to catch me. I didn't feel too bad, never felt like I wouldn't finish it off, and I suspect if he caught me earlier I might have run a few seconds faster.

B'man caught me bang on 8k, and immediately took a 10m gap, which I was able to hold for 4 laps. I thought I might have a shot in the last lap, but he took off hard and got out to 30m, and I didn't narrow that (last 2 laps 87/83)

Pleasingly I felt pretty good afterwards, but think I ran pretty close to my current potential.
As per last year it was interesting to see how fast Roberto Busi runs (he won easily despite stopping to tie his shoes) and impressed again by Cody's effortless style in second - he even offered a word of encouragement as he passed me - the best I could do was raise a hand in thanks.

So that's my first PB of this spring/summer - think I'll do the 5k at Penninsula Run in a fortnight to break a soft/old 5k PB (I think my official 5k PB is 18:57 from a couple of years ago!)