Bright but breezy morning saw us fighting the traffic to take part in the GSR, all with different goals, Gilly to get round in good shape and beat her last GSR, Tom’s to PB and beat my PB of 1:08 in 1996! My goal was to help Gilly in keeping to a nice even pace and encourage her in which ever form works best on the day! Met Ali & Chris who both had their own goals, Chris to PB and Ali to also help and encourage Gilly. Family support was amazing with Phil, Gaby, Rocky & Clare all doing their bit in bag holding and cheering!
Pre race time vanished and it was so busy in every department, traffic, people, runners and packed toilets meant by the time we were actually ready to run the race started.
We kept to a nice steady pace and Gilly was running really well, at times pushing 9 min/mile pace which was a little faster than planned but she looked good and not too grumpy! Ali bless her looked to be running at 50% and was chatting about dinner plans on her mobile, taking pictures and at one point I thought she would crack open the sewing kit!
After mile 6 the Gilly pains started and we had a few stretch breaks, she was in quite a bit of pain but bravely soldiered on to record a very good 1:39 breaking her PB by around 8 minutes. Chris had also done well with a 1:31 and Tom with a fast 1:13, unfortunately for Tom his asthma started to display it’s ugly self with around 3 miles left to go and his speed dropped off massively.
Back to Ali & Chris’s for a lovely meal to round off a rewarding day!
