Sudbury Fun Run 2006

10am 5 miles in 37 minutes

Week to date mileage 22.2

Month to date mileage 66

Average weekly rate 31.4

Average Monthly rate 136

Year to Date 466

Life time 8245

Dry and sunny

I decided to enter the Sudbury Fun Run this morning. The town of Sudbury is about 15 miles south of Bury St Edmunds on the A134.

As I hadn't pre entered I imagined registration would be fairly straight forward. However this race is one of those where the race start and finish are in two different places. The start is in in the centre of Sudbury and I went there first but couldn't see any signs to direct me so then thought registration would be at the finish nearby at Great Cornard Sports Centre. When I got there I found out it was back in Sudbury so I drove back and just managed to register by the 9am deadline. Then I had to drive back back to Gt Cornard to park the car and then jog back 1.5 miles to Sudbury to the start.

The race was easy in comparison but I have only myself to blame for not pre entering the race. Sudbury is probably unusual in still allowing a road race to take place from the centre of town and disrupt traffic. Bury used to stage its 10 mile race from the centre of town but I imagine due to pressure from authorities this was moved to its present location out of town at Nowton Park.

As it was a town centre start to the race there was a good crowd watching including the mayor. The road race was preceded by the walkers who set of at 9.30am to follow the same course. At the front of this race there was one guy who was clearly a race walker and by the end of the high street he had already won this race.

At 10am the road race commenced and there was a very good turn out I would imagine well over 300 competitors. The course seemed to be generally flat though as much of the course was open to traffic we were instructed to keep to the pavements. This generally meant quite a lot of running up and down pavements over the course.

For the first mile the road was congested and you pretty much had to keep in file which prevented you going of too fast which is a good thing. I arrived at the first mile in 7.20. The road then began to clear and I would imagine the 2nd mile marker might have been wrong or I went too quickly as I ran the 2nd mile in 6.58.

There was a drink station round about the half way mark which was very welcome as it was really quite warm. My 3rd mile was run in 7.21 before there were one or two slight hills I think on the 4th mile and I ran my slowest recording 8 minutes for this mile. My final mile was back to pretty much my average mile times and I ran 7.19.

My overall time of 37 minutes means an average of 7.24 miles. This is my best average mile time for a race since I restarted running last year. However according to the Prairie Inn Harriers scoring system ( a system used to compare performances over different distances) today's race scored 591 points which is 1 less than I scored for the Stowmarket 10 on the 26th March 2006 which I ran in 77.27 - average time per mile 7.45!

Anyone else use the Prairie Inn Harriers scoring system as part of their running log? I suppose it is a good way of comparing relative performances. It does point out that an elite athletes performance would score a 1000 points! It doesn't really include any allowance for age though.

All in all this was a very well supported event and it was good to actually have crowds of spectators watching and there were good numbers in Great Cornard and at the end of the race at the Sports centre.