SAAC Race Recap: Andrew Darnell Memorial Championship

The last time I did a SAAC race recap was the Gary Rice Championship run.

We have had a race since then, but Tom was busy building fence posts so I didn’t have any pictures for a race recap, so I decided to skip the Steve Baird Handicap race recap.

I had also planned to do a race recap for the Run For Russ fun run (you can read last year’s recap here), but it got canceled due to a lack of entries.  Yeah, I hear the “bummer”.

This week however we travelled out to Horsham for the Andrew Darnell Memorial Championship.

The course was 2 laps of a there and back course along the Wimmera River.

Being a championship run we all started off together.

This week was marked as a recovery week for my training (so no long run), so I was feeling good in my legs.

When the gun went off I was keeping a solid pace.  At one point I thought, wow I could overtake Meggy.  I didn’t though because she is a faster runner than me, and I knew if I did I’d be going way too fast and would burn out in the end.
I was feeling pretty good after the first lap, but I knew I still had another half to get through. I concentrated on breathing and making sure I kept my pace in check.

There were no fast Male runners this week, which was highly unusual, it was just me and Meggy out in front.

On the race home I was feeling it, I was breathing hard, trying to pump my arms faster to make me go faster, but I felt like I wasn’t building speed.

After crossing the finish line I had to keep moving simply to catch my breath.

Even though I had stopped my watch I hadn’t looked at my time.

Once I got my breath back I was shocked to discover I totally smashed my 5km pb by over 30 seconds!

Needless to say, I was wrapped.

I ended up coming 3rd based on handicap, so I might be up for another win in a few weeks’ time.