Marlow 5

 

I was in two minds whether to run this years Marlow 5 mile. I had been out for a run twice in the last two weeks. No real injury, just my legs and glutes objecting and a rise in temperature outside. But if this was to be my last race for a while, and the weather forecast was not too bad, I decided I could jog round if necessary. And this is such great event, particularly for slower runners. 

In the end I managed to run a consistent ten minutes per mile all the way round with a finish time of 50 minutes and nine seconds. My watch said I would be under 50 minutes as the pace was 9.55 (slower than this year's MK 10K), but the course turned out to be 5.03 miles. I was pleased with my heart rate of 154. It was lower in the first half until the sun came out later on. So the conditions were pretty perfect, mainly cloudy and a cool 13 degrees. I came in at 573 out of 807 runners and 11th out of 23 men over 70. I might have been the oldest there. We saw lots of people we knew, and then had a stop at John Lewis on the way home for free tea and cake with a voucher. Beautiful weather for the rest of the day, and very pleased we went.

Just a note about attendances. Marlow this year was down to 807 runners out of a maximum allowed of 1600. This compares with 1,075 runners in 2018, 1054 in 2017 and  993 in 2016. This is better than the Milton Keynes 10K which this year showed an attendance of only 575 runners compared with 919 in 2020 (but that was the week before lockdown) and 1,321 in 2018.