Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Croydon 2: The Revenge

The Croydon 10k is nothing if not a friendly race - there's definitely an atmosphere there which I've never encountered in any of the other races I've run over my long 6-month career. It's more of a pleasant morning out than a race (although mercifully without bouncy castles), and while there are still plenty of fast people around to intimidate runners like me there's a hefty fun run element which rather lightens the mood. While American races often involve hanging around at the start while everyone puts their hand on their heart and warbles The Star-Spangled Banner with moist eyes, in Croydon we delayed the start for a minute in order to cause maximum embarrassment to one of the starters, a junior international 400m runner whose 18th birthday is today, by singing Happy Birthday . And just about everyone was singing. Sometimes I'm proud of my country.

The course is anything but fun-run fodder. It's described in the modest language used for these things as "undulating", which translates as "goes up and down a lot". There's a total ascent of about 125m, which is fairly non-trivial for a 10k. The uppy-downy wouldn't be too bad if that wasn't combined with a course which twists and turns around suburban Croydon, each sharp turn into another suburban road bringing yet another change of gradient. There's a single water station at about 6.5km, at which I drank about a third of a cup and - for the first time ever - dumped the rest over my head. This felt very nice and cooling for the first few seconds before turning into merely feeling wet. The last couple of k's seem designed to taunt - "All downhill from here!" called a helpful spectator, and a couple of hundred metres on I found that they were lying as a final short yet sharp piece of ascent loomed up before the final trundle downhill onto the final stretch up to the park entrance and the finish.

This is main road and all of a sudden there's no shade any more. The "400m to go" board taunted me as I realised that the finishing kick usually reserved for the last few hundred metres of the race just wasn't there - I was just holding pace up to the finish, but mercifully so was everyone else. There were a few half-hearted attempts to break away, but nobody really changed place much over the last 500m. This is just as well, as a couple of kilometres earlier I'd passed a marshal with a counter who called "99.. 100.. Keep it up and you're in the top 100!" and therefore wasn't really in the mood to lose any ground. For a solid middle-of-the-packer such as me being in the top 100 is a good thing, and almost as much of a thrill as being on the first page of results when they print them in tiny type in the local paper.

And then that was it - into the park, past the guy with the microphone who inexplicably told the world "Number 17, Mike Knell. Ring that bell, Mike!" (you tell me..), over the line and into the finishing chute where I heard "That's 100!" from a time recorder somewhere behind me a few seconds later. A glance at the number caller's sheet confirmed that yes indeed, I've finished in the first hundred for the first time, and in a new personal best (two minutes off my previous PB, set on the flat-as-a-pancake Serpentine 10k on New Year's Day) of 42:40 by my watch. I got a medal from the Mayor of Croydon as per last time, though this time the rate at which people were finishing was low enough that I got the full handshake-and-medal-round-neck routine. Better than winning Olympic gold, I tell you, and with less of that troublesome flag-raising routine.

Which is good, although beating your PB has the drawback that next time you race the distance you'll feel the need to try and beat it again. What's better, though, is the fact that instead of Lucozade Sport and energy gels this race actually had a proper, honest-to-goodness refreshment tent where I could obtain a cup of coffee and a splendid home-made rock bun for the absurdly reasonable price of 90p. Given that I'd bought a cup of coffee at East Croydon station on the way out and been charged £1.60 for it this made me inordinately happy, as did sitting on the grass soaking up a bit of sun, munching on a rock bun and listening to the stragglers coming in.

I'd already collected my bag from the wonderfully efficient bag store run by a local scout group, leaving them a small donation in exchange (people who don't leave a small donation at these things deserve to be made to carry their bags round the course), so headed for home after stopping for a chat about the undulatingness of the course with a couple of other people in Serpentine colours. All in all it was a very pleasant morning out and a most enjoyable race, undulating or no. I recommend it.

I'll even forgive them for playing the theme from Chariots Of Fire both at the start and at the finish, an act which I thought was prohibited by law. Anyway, the film was about sprinters, not distance runners...

Posted by mpk at April 3, 2005 1:41 PM