Yesterday I took part in the Fradley 10k.

The course is a flat, two lap course which starts and finishes in Fradley, a village near Lichfield. The race is described as being super fast. If you want a 10k personal best then enter the Fradley 10k.

As I don’t have a car at the moment, I have to rely on other people and public transport to drive me to races. Yesterday, this meant that I arrived with very little time to spare and no time to warm-up. Yes, warm-up, it was freezing, it was even threatening to snow for the first half of the race.

I made my way to the start and stood around shivering and trying to avoid freezing to death (slight exaggeration).

The race started on time and I quickly discovered I had started too far back as it was virtually impossible to overtake people. Some people were walking within the first 10 minutes, the lanes got quite narrow in places so I settled down to a nice plodding pace.

I have never felt so relaxed during a race, my legs felt fine, my heart rate was low and it all felt easy. Running has not felt easy for years so it was a nice change. I honestly felt that I could have carried on running for hours. I guess that all of the training on the grass/mud and up hills has helped.

I have never done the second half of a 5k faster than the first half.

Epic effort level fail. I managed to speed up in the final kilometre but had left it too late to finish in under an hour. Another lesson learnt yesterday, don’t try and pull faces when you spot the official race photographer…

I don’t think that this photograph will make my race album!!

The only downside to this event was the waiting around/queue for the water and goody bags at the finish. The last thing people want to do after running in the freezing cold is stand around for 10 minutes. Still the goody bag and medal were both worth the wait.

Here is a stunning photograph I took of myself looking very red in the face an hour after the race.

It took me a few hours to warm up.

So thanks Fradley 10k and the organisers, my running mojo has finally returned. I’m about to complete my entry form for the Seven Pools Run which takes place later this month.