Brent Knoll Race 2018

Brent Knoll Race 2018 was the most underprepared I have felt before a race since I ran Bridgwater half marathon back in September.

Up until the last few weeks my training with Simon has been fantastic. I’ve learnt a lot and the speed sessions have been brutal but great.

It’s hard to explain what’s happened in the last few weeks but I’ve severely lacked motivation to get out and run. I had a day off work when I felt exhausted and completely run down. I took that whole week off from running.

The rest did me good but didn’t motivate me to get back out there. Knowing I had a race coming up should have been enough motivation but the week before this race I only ran 11 miles. And that was over 2 runs which isn’t enough.

So with all that being said, I didn’t know how I would be able to perform on race day. If nothing else I knew my legs would be fresh.

Due to my lack of miles I made sure I had a good warm up. 2 laps of a rugby pitch, drills and some strides got the blood pumping but my legs felt weak rather than fresh.

Burnham Harriers group shot

After the obligatory pre race photos with the Burnham Harriers we were lined up and ready start. The plan for this race was to go out hard until the first hill and then try to hang on!

Front & centre on the start line

Plan, what plan?!

Once we were off, that’s exactly what I did. I was just about hanging on to a group of about 10 runners and posted a first mile split of 6.15.

Making a strong start

When we reached that first hill I thought that I might not have been fit enough to execute that plan! I was blowing hard and as I started running again at the top of the first hill I could feel my heart rate was high. That was not a good sign so early on in the race.

I kept pushing until the next hill though which takes you to the top of the Knoll. Once up there you run about three quarters of the way round before descending on the other side. Oh hill descents, they truly are, in my opinion at least, a tricky thing to master.

I’ve always been pretty confident with descending but it’s been a while since I last ran down a hill as steep as that so I was a little hesitant. I just didn’t quite have enough confidence to be as gung-ho with it as I have been in the past.

Mud, mud, mud!

Once back on the reasonably flat ground I attempted to get some speed up. This proved difficult with mud caked on the soles of my trail shoes. The shoes I have are great and have fantastic grip but the mud seems to stick in the tread which is a little annoying.

So running on a country lane with mud laden shoes isn’t the best thing for building up speed! We were soon back off road though and then at the final descent. This hill is not that high but its steep and the mud gets pretty slippery.

Not long before I passed the Wells Harrier in front

Again, I was tentative to start with but I slipped anyway and slid a couple of feet. Once I regained my footing I just went for it and ended up almost sprinting the rest of the way down.

If anything that gave me the momentum I needed to push on for the last mile and a half. I was slowly gaining on a few people in front of me and once in the last field I decided to go for it and overtook a couple of them before the finish.

Trying to finish strong

I crossed the line in 44:15 and finished 23rd out of 169 runners. Considering my poor training in the weeks building up to this race I’m pretty happy with my performance. Especially considering I felt like I had nothing left half way through but still finished strong.

After the race I had to shoot off for a long overdue visit to my dads in Devon for lunch. It was a nice catch up which capped off a pretty good day. The event itself was well organised and well marshalled once again by the Burnham Harriers.

What’s next?

I’m hoping this race, and my performance in particular, has relit the fire and I can get back to training hard. On the 9th December I will be stepping out of my road running comfort zone. I’ll be competing in my first ever cross country race at the Somerset County Championships.

I have no expectations other than a lot of mud! They say cross country makes you a stronger runner, in a few weeks time I’ll let you know if that’s true.