National Masters Indoors 3,000m

I grabbed a lift with Paul for the short drive to Athlone (around 40 minutes). Upon arrival we were greeted with this wonderful new facility - I have to admit to a few butterflies as I stepped out into the arena - it looked absolutely amazing.

I was scheduled to race around 2:50pm but with lots of races being split into heats to accommodate the numbers everything was running late. I eventually ran a bit of a warm-up outside with Paul and Gerry around 3:30pm - 5 laps of the outside track before moving indoors to the mezzanine level where there was a 100m section of track overlooking the main 200m track where you could run some strides.

Still a fair bit of hanging around and eventually we were all called to the track for some race details. Again with lots of runners the race was split into heats and I was lucky enough to get in heat 1 which looked to be the quickest heat. Somewhat strangely, each heat contained a mixture of age-groupers so we were faced with the unusual situation of people in my age group (40 to 44) being spread in heats 1, 2 and 3. So basically it was all going to come down to time - the quickest times of the day in each age group irrespective of what heat they were run in would determine the medals.

I lined up at the start with 7 other runners. The beep sounded and we were off. I used the first few laps to get a feel of the track. I'd never run one of the banked bends before so wanted to get used to these and I found myself in 5th position. The pace certainly wasn't slow mind - and I was working had to stay in touch with the runners in front.

I think I went through the 1,000m in about 2:57 and it was around this point that I moved up a couple of positions into 3rd place. I wasn't feeling comfortable and the lungs were already starting to burn. The good thing about the 200m track is that the laps click down really quickly - I was hanging on to 3rd place and settled in as best I could. I was getting some great support from the crowd and that helped and as we went through 2,000m I made my move on the back straight to take the lead. That was great but my immediate thought was that I was going to blow up as I had the best part of 5 laps still to run!

Funnily enough the last few laps seemed to tick by very quickly. I was hurting but I knew from the feedback I was getting that I had opened up a decent gap and I wasn't going to let it slide. I hit the bell and enjoyed the last lap as much as I could crossing the line in 8:53 for the heat victory.

I was delighted with the time as I couldn't see myself breaking 9 minutes. The track was superb and must be short - that's the only conclusion I can draw! I then watched the next couple of heats which were slower so it turned out that I posted the quickest time of the day - across all the age grades! Another national gold medal and a 5 second PB in the process!

A shortish warm-down of 1.6km so around 7kms for the day. I'd certainly recommend anyone to go along to Athlone to have a look at this facility - it's first class! It's open to the general public so everyone is welcome to go along and give it a try. I'll certainly be back!

Here are a few photos (Thanks Jane!). The start:

























Taking the lead:

































The finish:

































A few celebratory beers in the evening!