As I discussed earlier, I was in doubt whether I should start at a 4:05 pace, and probably race alone, or join a group of another athletics club taking a 4:00 pace. As 4:00 was my plan A, and there was a lot of wind (I felt it immediately cycling to the course), I opted for the latter.
The course and wind
The course was a loop of 5 kilometres which you had to complete 8 times. The loop had a small detour, in order to arrive at the finish at 42.195K instead of 40K. This way, during the pandemic, only a small piece of cycling paths had to be guarded and inspected by volunteers. They did a great job handing out water, keeping the course clean et cetera, so thanks for that!
The course (small loop to the right is the 'extra' 2K)
The course itself had a small hilly bit, which, in all countries besides the Netherlands, would probably just count as flat. As I mentioned earlier, each loop had approximately 2K of strong head wind, which was a pity, but given that the weather forecasts predicted snow up until two days prior, I'm not complaining too much. The only downside to the course was a very, very slippery part, which was covered in some kind of mash of wet, flattened leaves. I nearly fell two times, and I wasn't the only one. People asked me whether it wasn't tough mentally to do 5K loops, but for me it wasn't. The nice thing of such a course is that you know exactly how far you are, and after a round or two, you know which parts are the gnarly bits and at which parts you can increase your pace a bit.
Team work
We did the first K at 3:59, then 4:01 (head wind), and then some K's in the low 3:50's. We kept each other at watch for the pace, and after a few kilometres, it evened out at a pace consistently around 3:56-3:58. Fast (for me), but it felt great and changing lead every 2 kilometres worked very well.
Team work (this was the full group, I think)
In the first half, when the group was around 8 men strong, this meant head wind only once in 16K, but soon runners started to drop and I think we entered the second half with a group of around 6 people, and after 32, we were left with four. This meant more head wind, but still, it beats running alone! The group work was – in my view – perfect, and it felt good to return favours constantly. At the end, two runners indicated they couldn't bear anymore head wind, to the other one and I took the lead some more. All in all, it was a nice piece of team work.
Final thoughts
I'm am really very glad that I chose to join the 4:00 group at the start. I shaved more than 12 minutes of off my PB (from 2:58:43 to 2:46:37)! We also had some nice small chats, shared some water bottles (which you should'nt, of course, in times of corona), and when some runner messed up the provisions table, making it impossible to grab my last Torq-gel, another runner in the group offered me a piece of banana. That's what I love about running: I guess everyone dreams of racing and winning like Kipchoge, but in the end, were all in it together to beat our own previous PB's and that motivates people to share, care and race hard. Great!
