It's Over!

I intended to blog last night with all the "the preparations are over, all that's left is to run the race tomorrow...", but I ran out of time, and here I am having completed the run without having charted my last preparations. Not too good, really. After last week's long run of 8 miles, I tapered with a couple of shorter runs, where I didn't exert myself, on Tuesday and Thursday. The "glycogen loading" high-intensity short run on Saturday just didn't happen, and I left it too late to get any energy gel to give myself a boost during the race - when I got to Asda, they were sold out.
Owain came around with Leyla on Sunday morning, and we discussed the points where the groupies were going to cheer us on from. Ten O'clock we headed for the start, with them expected to show up at various points around the course. Twenty minutes of hanging around, and then we set off, just an "on your marks", 2, 3, and then the hooter. We lapped the arena once before setting out on the course proper. About half a mile out, we went down a fairly steep slope to the bridge that carried us over the Silkin way, and I let gravity take me, and flew away from Owain so that when I reached the groupies (Wendy, Rhiannon and Leyla), I was clear ahead of Owain. Went through the 1 mile mark in 8 minutes - on target for 1:45. At the bench (second groupie check point) at about 2 miles (done in 16 minutes) I was still clear of Owain. However, he caught me up, and pulled ahead when I slowed to a walk at the drinks station. Past the 5 miles in 40 minutes - still on schedule, and heading down Coalbrookdale, and Owain is nowhere in sight ahead of me, when who should come jogging past me! He'd stopped for an unwatering pit stop, and was only now catching up! He was still ahead of me as we went past the groupies on the Ironbridge, and they were giving me grief about letting Owain beat me. I said to myself "this is where the tough get going", and started picking up places as we headed out alongside the river, including passing Owain again.
We recrossed the river at Coalport (last groupie check-point) and started the long climb out of the valley, still picking off people ahead of me, but still finding that there were people behind me coming past me. Eventually, we re-entered the town park, and went past the 12 mile mark in about 1:45, so that target is beyond reach, but the 2 hours looks comfortable. It's all about how fast, and how far down the field now.
There was one guy (he looked as if he might be in my age group) whom I had passed just as we headed out of Coalport, and who had re-passed me (etc., etc.) several times since then. Now, about haf-a-mile out, he comes steaming past me again. This awakens my competitive instincts, and I track him until we start to go past Wonderland, a couple of hundred yards from the finish, when I change from long-distance fast shuffling style to big-finish actually picking my feet up and running style, and I go steaming past him (I later found out that he was about ten years younger). And then picked up the speed, and picked off another 3 places before the finish, in what turned out to be 1hour 53.09 seconds, with the groupies whooping me home.
Results, 293 out of 660, and Owain finished just over 8 seconds and 134 places later! I was 7th finisher out of 20 in the over-60 class, and I managed to beat all the over-65s, and I finished 5 minutes behind the 6th over-60. At least he didn't beat me by an embarassingly narrow margin, where I'd have kicked myself for not trying that much harder.
It's now nearly midnight, my buttocks are still aching, so I'll have an early night, with more analysis of the numbers tomorrow.