I can't believe it has only been a week since my run at the Essex 20 it feels like an age ago. My body is still suffering from it, and so I have eased the pace and mileage back this week. I hope I am fit and firing again early next week. The most pressing issue is tightness and discomfort in my lower back, but my quads are also shredded and I'm starting to feel some tightness in my calves. I woke up with a sore throat this morning, when it rains it pours.
The cause of these various niggles, a 20 mile race on Mothers Day, 5 laps round a 4 mile loop of an airfield. I have done the Essex 20 three times previously but only once on this course. That was my effort back in 2023 when with no training to speak of I decided I would run the race anyway. I say run it was very much run/walk. Two and a quarter hours of the four hours and six minutes were spent walking.
The 2026 version of me was much better trained, particularly up to half marathon distance, with my very pleasing performance at the Middlesbrough Half (1:43) coming just two weeks prior to this race. I was struggling for a time target for this race. I knew I wasn't in shape to compete with my PB of 2:36:24 from 2017 but I thought 2:40-2:45 was reasonable.
I met up with Charlotte beforehand, we had run Benfleet 15 together in January and it was nice to see her again here. The race is a very club heavy race and also forms part of the Essex Championships and so the standard is good. It is a no frills affair, but that is fine, for almost everyone there it isn't an A race, it is a building block in their preparation for a spring marathon. For me it was London at the end of April and for Charlotte she is heading to Edinburgh in May for her marathon. We chatted before the start and I then left her with her clubmates before doing a short warm-up prior to the 9:30 start.
We got going on time, I had four lucozade gels in my pocket, one to be had at the end of each lap, with the fourth one fuelling me for my fifth and final lap. I hadn't really had much nutrition on my longer training runs, not wanting to carry bottles, so it was good to have something here. I didn't have any adverse reaction to the gels, but for whatever reason I decided not to use the water stations at this race.
Five laps round an airfield has it's pros and cons. One of the pros you might expect is a nice tarmac surface but it was far from it, it was pothole central, nothing too dramatic but you definitely had to watch where you placed your feet at times. The pros were you were only ever four miles from your car and portaloos, neither of which I required but it was good to have that comfort. I did see a number of runners popping back to their cars to de-layer or to pick up supplies and they were close enough that little time will have been lost.
A mixed pro/con was that you knew what was around the corner after that first lap. Conditions were good, dry and a pretty perfect temperature, the one big downer for me was the wind. Strava tells me it was only 12mph, but it felt considerably stronger and definitely picked up after the first couple of laps. The early section of the course was sheltered but there was a particular straight that was very exposed and the wind was right in your face. It was on that straight on the third lap that I had my first walk break. Walk breaks were definitely not in my pre-race plans and so from there it was very much trying to limit the damage. I would end the race having walked for 13 minutes, which is 13 minutes too long, but is also 2 hours less than I walked in 2023.
If we look at my five mile splits:
1-5 miles - 41:14 (8:15 min/miles)
6 - 10 miles - 42:07 (8:25 min/miles)
11 - 15 miles - 43:55 (8:47 min/miles)
16 - 20 miles - 49:11 (9:50 min/miles)
Sprint of the line - 1:31 (7:15 min/miles)
Total time of 2:57:55 and 330th out of 509.
As you can see I get progressively slower section by section before finding a sprint finish of sorts. The first two splits are all running, and that extra 10 seconds a mile isn't too sad, much of it will have been me getting over excited in the first couple of miles of the race.
The third section includes the first walk break, miles 11,12 and 13 were clean, and the extra time then comes in miles fourteen and fifteen. Maybe a minute and a half lost in the third section before the time really hemorrhages in the 4th and final section, call that seven and a half minutes for a total of nine minutes lost in total.
