2017 Championship - Race 3 - Bolton 10k

At the end of a busy week in Bolton which had seen Theresa May launch the Tories' General Election campaign in the town, making it the centre of the UK political map, St George's Day saw the annual running of The Bolton 10K at Leverhulme Park being the third race in the NWFPAC 2017 Championship. Some might say then that the town was therefore (ignoring the small matter of The London and The Blackpool Marathons) the centre of the UK athletics map for a time!

Unusually fine weather greeted the arrival of over 700 runners and saw the NWPAFC entrants gather for the usual pre-race chatter / obligatory excuses, including "this is my first race other than a parkrun for 12 months", "I have been a bit chesty" and "I ran too fast at parkrun yesterday". In the absence of Steven Henderson, it looked a more open race than usual although unbeknown to most of us, Matt Smith had also entered and was set to finish 12th overall - fantastic effort Matt!

Lining up with Dave, Alan and Paul, strategically placing ourselves in the 'not too fast, not too slow' zone, we wished each other a good race and then the gun sounded and we were off!

I quickly wished I had started closer to the front group as I spent most of the 1st km weaving in and out to find some space. By the end of the first km, just before the infamous 'Cruella de Hill' which is unfortunately very well known to us Bolton parkrunners, I realised that any chance of getting close to the 43:58 time I ran last year had probably gone. After struggling up 'Cruella' any such chance had definitely gone and my thoughts were on trying to break the 45min mark.

The course is an undulating two laps of the park and the surrounding roads of Breightmet, well marshalled and organised by Bolton United Harriers. I would like to be able to report how I had seen fellow NWFPAC runners during the race but apart from a brief shout out to fellow Boltonian Paul Johnson at around the 7km mark, I am afraid I didn't see anyone and seemed to always be in a large amount of space, never quite able to catch other runners in front and therefore (with difficulty) ran what I would describe a decent paced race until the last kilometre which is a flat run in to the athletics track. I tried at that point to put on a 'spurt' to get below the 45 min mark but to no avail and ended up finishing in 45:20.

The real battle for points amongst the NWFPAC fraternity saw an intriguing race between Messrs Johnson, Budenberg and Simmons which was nip and tuck all the way round. Dave set the early pace and reacted swiftly to Paul's challenge just before the 5km and put some daylight between them. Little did Paul know that Alan had paced the race very well and cruised past him at 8.5km and Alan also overcame Dave in a tight finish which saw only 9 seconds separate the three of them.

At the end, we all gathered at the finish line, enjoying the free haribos and fetching Bolton 10K technical t shirts and somehow forgot to have the obligatory post-race Group Photograph before heading away.

Full results for the race are at www.chiptiming.co.uk