Falésia 5k - Low key World Championship Warm Up!

Start line (Photo - Spectrum Striders)

A record field of 150 lined up for the 12th annual Falésia 5k on Tuesday 13th March organised once again by Spectrum Striders and renamed the Joe Shellhorn Falésia 5k in memory of one of their club members who had so enjoyed and been part of this event.

The conditions were variously blistering hot or shady depending on which of the little clouds decided to take its turn in front of the sun. Stuart Gibson, Frances Ferguson and Alan Derrick joined an international field on the tightly packed start line ready for the 10am start, full of anticipation and nervousness over how the already tired legs would handle the two and three quarter laps of either up or downhills. Due to the downhill start, this is one of those races where patience is a virtue as inevitably many will take off way too fast and falter when the downhill start becomes the first long up hill drag.

Stuart powers around the bottom bend (Photo 2:09 Events)

And so it came to pass. Having been dropped by everyone and anyone at the start, I gradually picked dozens of runners off (mainly Germans it seemed) who had shot their bolt. On the first lap I could see Stuart running strongly already 150-200m ahead. But it was an indication of the quality of the field that even Stuart was already somewhat detached from the first few. As the laps ticked by remarkably quickly, I made the final right hand turn onto the 800m long uphill straight (thankfully a gentle curve so you can't actually see all the way along it) to the finish. I was pretty sure I had passed all the M50's from our training group but in the final 100m there was a bloke with flowing auburn curly locks blowing out his ears about 10m ahead. Although sprinting was not possible at this stage, more a gradual acceleration, the racer in me decided that I could not be beaten by someone who was so obviously struggling even if they were probably only in the 30's age group. So I glided by and progressed across the line to bend over double in agony. At this point, the bloke tapped me on the shoulder and said are you M50? Of course I said yes and the disappointment was evident as he actually was M50 too (Frances reckoned that not only was his hair dyed but he had had some "work done". I of course was too polite to notice). It just goes to show that in any age-group race, pass everyone you can because there are a lot of Peter Pan's out there in the veteran ranks!

Frances tails Mike Gratton (Photo 2:09 Events)

This meant I was first M50 in a time of 18:05, a full 36 seconds faster than last year and 18th overall. Stuart ran a well paced race, working his way up to an excellent 5th position overall in a time of 15:53 and first of the 120 participants from the 2:09 Events Algarve training camp group. Frances has had an injury free year and this made a huge difference to her performance, improving by some 50 seconds to cross the line in 21:48 and second F50. Frances was also just 19 seconds behind the returning from injury Mike Gratton, 1983 London Marathon winner, Commonwealth Games bronze medalist and organiser of this training camp for the past 35 years.

A journalist from one of the major broadsheets (the Telegraph I think) was also on the training camp and writes the runner's blog for that newspaper. I believe she is going to write a piece on this race titled something like "The best 5k you've never heard of". Why? For a race where entries are taken in the local Neptuno Bar (4 Euros to enter), the field was stacked with GB, German, Latvian and possibly other internationalists. From our training group alone we had Tracy Barlow and Jenny Spink (both current GB international marathon runners) and one place in front of Stuart we had Robbie Britton, GB ultra international demonstrating a remarkable competitive range from 5k to 100 mile plus! Cheering on from the side lines was Ally Dixon, another GB Women's Marathon International who put in such a strong performance at the World Championships in London last year (they are all here doing final preparation for the World Half Marathon Championships in Valencia in a few weeks time). The race was won by a Tom Thurley of Potsdamer Laufclub, one of several German clubs that had their towels well to the fore on the start line.

6km of pristine beach - the perfect training environment

Once again the race demonstrated just what the body can do if you remove all negative thoughts. The race was about half way through the training camp and we all considered it as part of the training on already heavy legs (indeed we went out for another training run in the afternoon after the race). It helps when you rest and fuel properly though as illustrated below.

Thanks to Frances and Stuart for being great company through the week and getting Calderglen noticed (I know a few of the other participants had Googled Calderglen Harriers to see who on earth we were after the race!). Also well done to both on launching themselves fully into all the training. In the first10 days Frances ran 104 miles and I completed over 120 miles whilst Stuart ran more in a week than he has previously done during the 7 days he was there!
Alan

Post 5k nutrition