My running of late has been a bit hit and miss, to be honest more miss than anything else; however the Maidstone 10k was fast approaching, and I knew I had not trained as much as I should have; but stupidly I thought this would not be too much of a problem, as I had recently completed a half marathon, so I knew I could run the distance (Idiot).

I awoke nice and early on the Sunday morning, and settled in to my routine of getting my kit ready and eating a good solid breakfast of porridge. The race was not due to start until 10.00am so I had plenty of time for last minute checks, I only live about half hour from Maidstone so left home at around 08.15 knowing I would be there at around 09.00, so that I could pick my number up at the registration desk. It was then only a matter using the facilities and relaxing until the start.

I was expecting there to be a a lot of runners at this event, but oddly it was fairly quiet

10 o’clock came around, the safety briefing was given and we were off, it has to be said that looking at my splits, the first two miles were OK, mile one was a sub 9 minute mile and mile two just over 10 minutes, however after that I seemed slow right down for miles three and four (around 11 minute mile); I have no idea why this was, as there were no great big hills to contend with. At mile 5 onwards I picked up pace again, giving me a finish time of 1 hour and 3 minutes ( 4 minutes away from a P.B.)

For me this 10k was a hard race, I found myself constantly having to walk sections, I think the issue was not necessarily my fitness level but the lack of strength in the legs, again I can only put this down to the lack of training before hand. lesson learnt is do not take anything for granted, if you want a good race then train for it.