This was my 8th 10-mile road race, and turned out to be my 2nd fastest ever.
The previous 10-milers I've done are the old Tom Scott route from Law to Motherwell Strathclyde Loch, round Derwentwater (twice), Llandudno, Lasswade (twice) and one previous attempt at the Millport race.
The old Tom Scott route was early days, so I stood no chance of getting under the hour. I close to the hour with 60:30 at the hilly Derwentwater course. I've missed the hour both times at Lasswade with the big climb out of Roslin Glen. Llandudno was my first sub-60 minutes 10-miler back in 2004 with a time of 59:56. This was far too close to be happy with, so in 2007 I managed 56:25 at Millport.
I'm sure I will never beat this 10-mile PB, but I was still keen to clock another proper sub-60 time, so was aiming for around the mid 58-minute mark, which I thought should be comfortable and achievable.
At lunchtime it was far too warm for running, but luckily by 2pm it had clouded over, with a breeze picking up.
I set out with the front runners, but soon David Simpson, Keith Hood, Grant Wilkie (all Corstorphine) plus Stuart Gibson of Cambuslang had all pulled away. So I was left chasing Alex Allardyce and Tommy Lawrence, sitting in 7th place. After less than 2 miles I was caught by Kevin Hutchinson, and we ran together until about mile 9 when I suddenly upped the pace and managed to pull away by 7 seconds in the last 200 metres.
I was pleased to record 58:28, which pretty much matched my target time. And Ellie did well to finish as first lady in 66:37, which was almost a minute faster than she ran in 2007.
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