Olympic Park 10k, 1 Nov 2020

On Sunday I took part in the RunThrough Olympic Park 10k, a 4 lap course with several twists and turns around the Olympic Park in Stratford, London. The original plan had been to do a half marathon this day, however due to COVID this had been shortened. Instead, my first standalone 10k race in quite some time!

I had had a very busy and tiring week on placement at the hospital and therefore my taper training hadn’t quite been as planned. However, I was really excited to have a change of scenery, some fresh air and a chance to catch up with Tim and Eleanor in-person at the race!

The race was fantastically organised, very COVID secure and in my warm-up I was really impressed with the signage and marshals on the course. I felt good in the warm-up and was excited to see what I could do!

I seeded myself well in the socially distanced, rolling start and found myself running with a couple of men who were at a good pace for the first 3 miles. I notoriously go off far too fast in running races but this time I was more conservative and stuck with these two guys. We went through 5k in just under 20mins and I was feeling really comfortable at this point. However, after this one of the guys dropped off and the other sped up so I found myself on my own for the remainder of the race. This was challenging as there were some serious headwinds at points which I had previously been sheltered from. Additionally, psychologically lap 3 started to really hurt and I could have benefited from someone ahead to hold on to throughout the lap! My pace started to drop off but I tried to remain calm and regain strength for the final lap where the finish line was finally in sight!

With a mile to go my body was really hurting but I dug deep and managed to find a kick to the finish. 40:47 was my final finishing time. 3rd lady overall (out of 101) and 28th person (out of 274).

I was really chuffed to have managed a sub 41. With all that had been going on in my life in the build up to this race and having not initially prepped for a 10k! I felt very comfortable at the 5k mark which also very promising. With the announcement of lockdown 2, this will sadly be my final race for a while. However, it was a perfect end to November racing!

Megan Powell