RunThrough Olympic Park

Today I ran the RunThrough 10k at the Olympic Park, my first race since September of last year and my first race of that distance since September 2019, when I just about squeaked under an hour to come home in 59:53. This morning was a slightly different affair as I was on pacing duty rather than chasing a PB, trying to help my partner set her own benchmark time seeing as I’ve apparently managed to successfully cajole her into this whole running thing. The course isn’t desperately flat and the vibes are a little strange - RunThrough obviously try to give the events a wholesome community feel, but given the structure and nature of their races, everyone doing them is essentially using them as a good way to set a PB, so our fellow racers were by and large on a bit of a mission. With that being said, I certainly had a great time, at least after my legs had finally warmed up somewhere around the 3rd lap of four loops, my high mileage training apparently making it take a good while for them to be on board with doing some steadier kilometres. Overall we finished quite a bit faster than I had thought we might, a hair over 54 minutes, and it was intriguing to see my partner start to push herself for the first time as we were on the last lap.

It also turns out that Mo Farah was at the race, as his wife was running - obviously she smoked us in 44:35. Clearly he did a good job of keeping a low profile though as we didn’t seem him, but at the next one I’ll be sure to have my eyes peeled for any former I’m A Celeb contestants.