Wind at night wind in the morning

This time yesterday I received an email from Marie to tell me that it was Geoff Hall's 60th birthday. In contrast to some features, where it takes me ages to dig out an appropriate photo, I thought straightaway of the ones I had taken in the Laxey Fell race last year and within about five minutes of receiving the email I had added the photo of Geoff.

It was a lot nicer that day in the mountains than it was last night. Although the 10,000 metres championships don't produce big fields (although last year there was a bigger entry for them than any other track and field senior Manx championship) those that do tend to have targeted the race for a while so it was a shame that all the times were slowed by the wind - by how much is anyone's guess.

My training sessions suggested that I am in the best form since before I got injured in August 2008 and I thought I would target the time I ran in the equivalent race in 2008 - 35.51. Like others in the race I couldn't decide whether to adjust my race plan to allow for the wind. I was therefore relaxed when my first lap was 1 second slower than my 86 seconds a lap schedule but thereafter I made my mistake. I was not too much loosing ground on Mike Garrett and Ed Gumbley for a while which should have given a clue, particularly as they appeared to be looking at their watches to judge their pace every few yards. I went too fast and as a result, I slowed later and finished in 36.12. Apart from my pace judgement though I was very pleased with the gaps with other athletes and my recovery was good this morning - running into the wind again!

Paul Jackson kindly dropped off a CD for me to publish Kerry Mackey's photos. I would like to say that it took me a while to publish them as I had some urgent family matter to attend to -but I would be lying! I was actually watching the TT on ITV4 whilst sipping red wine. By the way, there are still people saying that they can't watch it because they only have Freeview (and ITV4 was taken off) but it also streamed on ITV.com and can be watched later on the ITVplayer.

As already said on the forum, I would like to thank all the people involved in the event last night - the man hours put in by the officials probably exceeded the time spent by the athletes.