What a challenge, a run from Waterford to Tramore I just couldn’t pass off this opportunity to participate in such a long standing famous run in Waterford.
This was a wet and windy day and certainty made the warm up session an important part of the race preparation. The Bolton Street car park was the perfect spot for such a warm up and I wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines as the car park was packed of runners in their pre-race routine.
In fact I may overdone my time in the warm up area as I made my way to the start line on The Mall I was way back amongst the large crowd and it was tough going under starters orders as it was hard to gain a full race stride at the start.
2 miles into the run and the pace had settled down and I was in a good group of runners some of whom I recognised from previous runs so I knew I was on track.
What surprised me most about the run out to Tramore was the up hill nature of the road I felt as though I was running up hills the whole time (which I hate). I pushed hard at the 5 mile mark but on reflection it was too early because the crew I was with caught and passed me too easily at the 6.5 mile mark and it wasn’t until I got into the last 0.5 mile that some streng came back for the finish line.
In fact I was finishing even stronger when I heard Jonathan Brazil give a huge roar of encouragement near the end of the run.
In the last stretch and hurting
I had set a goal of 7 minute miles and I caught a time of 50:53 for the 7.5 miles which was 1 minute & 37 secs inside my goal time of 52:30 mins. I was hugely proud of achieving that goal.