And so it came that on a sunny, if windy, Sunday afternoon in May, 10000 odd folk took to the streets of Edinburgh for this years Great Edinburgh Run and I put in a new P.B. for the 10km!

I got through quite early with Lesley, one of my running mates, as she needed to pick up her timing chip before the event so we had plenty of time to get ready and not have to be rushing about like mad trying to get to the start!

Time enough in fact that we went and got a wee cup of pre-race hot chocolate at one of the cafes that was open right by the start/finish straight! Since we had so much time on our hands we managed to get a wee short warmup jog in as well which was a massive help come the end of the run since we ended up covering the last 1km or so of the route. I always like to know a bit out the course before I set out so I don't get a nasty shock that there's suddenly some beast of a hill I didn't know about.

The start was pretty frenetic and very very twisty down into Princes Gardens. I'm glad we were in the first wave of runners to head out, any further back and there would've just been too many folk trying to funnel down the Mound and through the Gardens to be able to put in a good time. The route definitely felt a lot more 'lumpy' than I remember it, you almost always seemed to be going up or down a hill as opposed to just rolling along on the flat.

I was pretty pleased with my pacing over the course of the race and I only really started to feel the burn in the last couple of k's, not so bad that I couldn't drop in one of my usual sprint finishes though!

My final time (which has just tonight changed as it happens) was 43mins 14secs, a good 10mins or so faster than my time 2 years ago! I set out to hopefully do something in the region of 45mins so I'm really pleased with getting considerably under my target. Next time - sub-43mins!