10km RACE

Yes it is a rest week, but I had penciled in a couple of easy runs and a TT for Wednesday. So come Wednesday evening I lined up for the Silver Queen 10km race at Ysterplaat. At this point I'm going to back track a bit.
Like every other day I left the office at 16h00 and headed home, Dawn was walking the dogs, so when she came home there wasn't much to do but get changed and head out. We were on the road at 17h00 leaving with plenty of time for the 18h30 start. Well the traffic was bad and the 15km trip took over an hour!!! (and that was even after we had covered the 1st 10km in 20min, should have left the car and ran to the start...)
The top 40+ guys weren't there so I was not only lining for a solid run, but a shot at prise money. 1st 40+ was out of the question as Vladimir Kotov had taken off his 50s and was lining up as a 40...
The race started in a hanger out of the wind and with the sound of the gun still echoing around us we took off out the open door and turn with the wind behind us. I struggled to stay with that early pace, but I had to keep in the mix as we were turning into the wind and I didn't want to be left in no-mans land (like my friend Charles). I was sitting in the 2nd group, Kotov was in the 1st group and 1 other 40+ was with me, in fact I was using him to block the wind. I didn't stay behind him for long as he was small and I wanted to be behind the biggest guy in the group. The other 40+ was working hard fighting the wind. Turning down the main runway and having the wind at our backs was great, and for the 3rd km I ran a 3:23. As we turned into the wind again I saw the other 40+ had dropped of our pace. We went through 5km in 17:31 and I was thinking about breaking 35min. That wasn't going to happen as we turned into the wind again at the start of the 2nd lap. I even took the pace a bit to try and speed things up, but was unable to keep the pace. Turning with the wind I thought that km to 8 would be quick, but taxing down the runway I could only reach 3:30 for the km and that isn't enough for take off or to make up the lost time to break 35. I was left to fight the wind on my own for the last 2km and lost more time finishing with 35:39.

I'm happy with the effet and the time, my 11th pace overall was on important, but coming 2nd 40+ was nice as I picked up a couple of bucks...