Despite knowing that this two and a half lap course around the town contains the hill three times I entered yet again this year. Preparation for the event had been interesting as I enjoyed time in Berlin watching the World Athletics Championships, the amazing Usain Bolt and all. Berlin provided inspiration but training was a bit limited to what I could fit in early morning around the Tiergarten. Framlingham was a bit different to Berlin, although Framlingham castle's walls still remain in place, the weather was surprisingly similar, sunny and warm.

The 10k starts around the corner at the bottom of the town's hill so within 500m it is uphill, by which time I had managed to get myself into the right sort of pace. I do wonder why people who are planning to walk the race think it is a good idea to start at the front of the field! I was soon tracking a bunch of five women who were clearly racing hard, I tried to keep in touch with this group for the first lap, and slowly began to gain ground. On the second lap I was on a par with the group and started to go by some of them. Three women remained ahead of me and for the rest of the second lap we exchanged places, someone shouted from the side that these were the leading ladies. The race intensified as the kilometres sped by, I was hanging on to this group and for a while I moved ahead only to find one of the ladies catching me up and going by me. With 2k to go two women were running alongside me, and then on the last k up the hill for the last time one of them moved away and despite the efforts of the two of us we could not catch her.

Although I have never been fast enough to be at the front of a race it was a great experience to be up at the front of the women's race and experience the fluctuations in fortunes. True that the main local female runners were not around as the Ipswich half marathon last week had taken their attention, but at least it gave me a chance to enjoy a good run and witness a race for first place at close quarters.

When I got home I checked my running diary to discover that I was 72 seconds slower than my course record of 7 years ago, but 159 seconds faster than my slowest time. At least it was an average time for me and more importantly I enjoyed a good day out.