A fresh and breezy park met the 300 or so runners in Bushy Park on Saturday morning. I (David) planned to have an ‘moderate’ run (whatever that means) and set off at an easy pace. I believe from here on to the finish I was only overtaken by one person (who was running with a push-chair), and at the 3km mark with the wind firmly blasting us in our faces it really slowed him down so I moved ahead. I tried to tuck in behind a couple of people on this windy straight but it felt like they were running backwards and in frustration I opened up and ran past them. I moved up through the field all the way to the 4km point and then it was race time! I rounded the corner by the playground with two other runners right beside me - so much so that my arm hit one of them at one point - it was that close. Before long it turned into a great little tussle between myself and a chap called Ciaran and I managed to get a final burst over the final 200 meters to finish four seconds ahead of him.

I finished 22nd overall with a time of 19:31 - not a great time, but the wind really did make a difference today (there were 10 PB’s in the first 100 finishers - compared with 25 last week) and I wasn’t planning on racing it hard. Overall I was happy with my run.

Sharon here now: I wasn’t really sure what I was planning until Ray started the race! I headed off up the starting straight and felt pretty good, except for someone had put lead in my quads. Between 1-2km, it was boiling hot! Phew! I was prepared for the wind as I had already had a small taster of it whilst warming up. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much it would make me feel like I was running backwards for the kilometre between 3 and 4. Some cheeky so and so tried to draft off me, so naturally I made it as hard as I could for him to do it…

I was pretty glad when I headed past the playground into the final kilometre. The wind dropped as soon as we rounded the corner and it got warm again. I saw David with about 800m to go and continued ploughing on past the fountain, trying to catch the person in front which I did at the final tree. Unfortunately, she got me back with about 200m to go…next time…

I finished in 200th position in my best time since the injury struck in early October last year. It was nice to be back in the 26:xx again…finished in 26:24. I can only wonder if it would have been 25:xx if it hadn’t been for that pesky wind tunnel!!