Brighton Phoenix 10k Road Race, 17 Jul 2024

On a Wednesday evening, on holiday, I somehow managed to convince my boyfriend and the friend we were travelling with to join me in taking a train to Brighton and racing a 10k race! It was all very impromptu, with us enrolling just a week in advance, but I was really happy to have a race to look forward to after I had to pull out of IronBourne, the 70.3 I was meant to be doing, due to a biking injury.

The weather had been lovely all day and was still warm by the evening, and, as we had some time to kill when we arrived, we took our time strolling along the pier to the start line.

The turnout was surprisingly large, with many local clubs bringing along dozens of athletes. The other runners were mostly young and serious-looking and there were a lot of Super shoes to be seen. I was excited about being in a race with some fast people because I was on the hunt for a PB, having run 40:51 in April this year. I was really hoping I could break the 40-minute barrier, especially with the course being a flat out and back.

However, I’ve also learnt from races in the past where I’ve put too much pressure on myself and not enjoyed the process, so I was conscious to keep my thoughts on “let’s see what I can do”, rather than fixating on the 40-minute mark, as I did my warmup jog, drills and strides. I got into the sub-40 pen (but close to the back) and before I knew it, we were off!

My race plan: start slow, get faster, as I was trying to minimise the perceived intensity of the race to prevent the middle slump that I sometimes get over a 10k distance. As a product of this, I was overtaken by many people in the first kilometre, but I kept my cool, focusing on my breathing and finding a rhythm. Then my watch beeped to mark 1km: 3:59.

Ok so I hadn’t started slowly exactly, but I could work with this. If I do this 10 times in a row, I will be a sub-40 10k-er! Still not looking at my watch, but trying to feel the pace, I clocked another 2kms at 4:00 on the dot. But then the course deviated from totally straight and totally flat to somewhat bendy with the tiniest bit of incline and I started to feel that this was quite hard work. Kilometre 4 - 4:05. Damn, that’s 5 seconds I’ll have to make up later. Kilometre 5 - 4:06. Have to speed up a bit or I’ll miss it. Kilometre 6 - 4:05. I thought I had sped up! What’s the point? I’m not going to make 40 minutes now.

That was the moment where I had to have a mid-race pep talk. I was still running well, my form hadn’t dropped and even if I ran 4:05s all the way, I would still have a PB! A mantra that I had used in another race popped into my head, “it’s not over ‘til it’s over” I said to myself as my feet beat in time, “it’s not over ‘til it’s over”. The race I had used it in was Varsity triathlon where I was in first place on the run and I was reminding myself to keep moving and not get too comfortable because I could still be caught. But here the small silly phrase meant, “don’t give up, it’s still worth finishing the race even if you don’t achieve your A goal”.

So that’s what I did. I didn’t look at my watch except for the splits at every kilometre mark, instead focusing on the people around me, picking off some of the runners who had gone out too hard and trying to stick with people who were accelerating away.

By 8km in, I was suffering pretty badly, and I could feel that my HR was sky high, but I finally managed to break the 4:05/4:06 rut and run a 4:02. And then the final kilometre was for free, 3:53, which shows that I did still have something in reserve. Maybe I could have tapped into it a bit earlier? Maybe my fear of blowing up had limited me? Possibly. But when I looked at the stats post-race and saw that my average HR was 195bpm, I’m quite glad I didn’t push it any higher.

40:25 in the end. Not quite what I wanted but still a 26 second PB in a race with pretty good pacing and mental fortitude. I was proud of myself in the end but I’m still hungry for more!

Emilia Miller