Mens Health 10k Race (by John Tougher)

Report by John Tougher –

The annual fathers day 10k at Bellahouston park today nearly didn’t go ahead
this year due to lack of funding. However they managed to secure enough and did
a great job putting it on as usual. A new addition this year was the rascal
race, which was a 1k loop in the park for the kids prior to the race. My two
girls loved it and wore their medals with pride. The problem was though, it
didn’t leave me enough time for a warm up ( or a pre match trip to the
portaloo!) as I dashed over to the start line for the main event.

I wasn’t sure how to approach it. Troon and Land o Burns races showed me I’m in
40:30 – 41:00 shape so that was a realistic target. I decided to try and not
look at the watch and just run on ‘feel’. 1st kilometre is always congested so
cant get off to a flier but as we exit the park, the runners herniated into the
space provided by the closed roads and we were off. I couldn’t resist a sneaky
peak at halfway to see where I was at and at 20:07 I was ticking along nicely.
Then thoughts of a storming last 5k and a negative split started filtering in to
my head. Could a sub 40 actually finally be on?  Well…..no. My storming last
5k brought me home with a massive positive split in a final time of 40:48 as my
attempt to run on ‘feel’ made me ‘feel’ knackered!  Anyway, it’s were I figured
I was so shouldn’t be too surprised.  Need to work on my speed endurance if I
want to break the elusive 40 mins.

The organisers are anticipating that this won’t be on next year due to lack of
funding. I hope someone steps up and supports it because there were over 3000
men running today and it would be a shame to see all their good work fall away.
Onwards and upwards.

(John T, 16/6/2013)