Cyprus International 4-Day Challenge: Day 4 - Too Hot for Santa

Race start/finish in the harbour

The final day was the earliest start yet with a 5:30 alarm call for a coach departure at 6:30 and an 8am race start at Paphos harbour for the 10k. I was pleased to see that although still with a chesty cough, this was the first morning where my resting pulse had been back in the low fifties rather than around 70 bpm as it had been for the past week, suggesting that my cold may finally have been lifting.

With the 250 starters lined up the temperature was already in the low 20’s. Although I was a safe age group winner with a 20 minute gap to the next M45, my aim was to run an honest race and try to have a better performance than the previous two days. Meanwhile Jimmy had made it to the line after eight hours of solid stretching on his injured calf and the motivation to beat the M60 ahead by just over a minute to move up to second M60. On the gun I went with the lead pack climbing up a ramp and out around the other side of the harbour. There was a lot of puffing going on and I easily moved into a top three position before the front two moved away. Once again I was passed by an ambulance! However this time I managed to accelerate past it and in the process moved past the early German leader into second place seemingly moving away from the chasing pack. Although flat in comparison to the previous two days, we were climbing steadily inland and after 3k the naturally tired quads started to ache and the breathing became heavier. The overall second placed athlete breezed past.  I held onto third until about the 6k mark at which point one of the army runners moved past, followed shortly afterwards by the leading German athlete and one final place was lost at about 7k. The legs were screaming for the final 3km but the last 2km through the now busy harbour front did at least seem to pass quickly with the help of crowds of people. I was unchallenged over the last 200m and cruised home in 35:49 in 6^th position. Overall I was satisfied with that performance and subsequent download of the Garmin showed that my pace had in fact been quite even, varying between 3:30 and 3:48 kilometres.

Finished!

Jimmy appeared sometime later, crossing the line in just over 50 minutes, not bad considering his modified running style to save the injured calf. The clock was running and his rival appeared just over a minute later. However, we had to wait 5 or 6 hours until the official results were posted in the hotel to see that he had indeed done enough and finished as second M60 overall by only 7 seconds. The official results also confirmed me as 13^th overall and first M45 some 27 minutes ahead of the next M45. My German alcohol free team had moved up gradually on each day and finished 7^th out of 22 teams. Despite the team name, the entire team enjoyed the free beer on offer to all finishers at the finish line!

All in all an extremely well organised event with complex logistics all smoothly handled. The races were tougher than I imagined, in part due to the hotter than normal temperatures. In fact as the photo shows, today it was even too hot for Santa in Paphos!

Too hot for one Santa