It's that time of year again! This week it is the turn of the Twilight 5k, third race in the RFYL Grand Prix series, with the twist of it being held on a Friday evening rather than Saturday morning.
I'm excited to race, there's always an extra buzz for the GP races and the fact that it's held on a Friday night uptown adds to the occasion too. The course itself is tough and that combined with the usually oppressive heat and humidity means that people generally run 10-20 seconds slower here than they do at Skyline which we ran two weeks ago. The first two miles are flat and potentially fast but then you start climbing with about a mile to go and there's no real let up until the finish. For some reason the wind always seems to pick up around the football stadium too so the last mile becomes one hard slog to the finish. If you are going to get photographed in this race make sure it is during the first two miles!
I have a mixed relationship with this race. The first time I ran it I had a storming race in 16:02 which was actually faster than I had run at Skyline the previous week. Since then my times have progressively gotten slower though, culminating in last year's chastening 16:43 during which I honestly thought I was walking towards the end. On the plus side, however, I do have fond memories of the 2008 race, when I ran 16:20 and garnered my one and only Grand Prix race victory to date.
I won't reveal my tacics for this year's race in this forum but suffice to say I don't plan to go through two miles in 10:34 like I did last year!
I'm actually coming off the back of a pretty awful workout the other night when I did some 200s on the track but the heat and humidity was getting to me and I felt very sluggish. That heat and humidity isn't going to go anywhere so I'd best man up and get on with it, starting tomorrow night hopefully!
Good luck to any readers who will be out there tomorrow night and I'll see you after the race!
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