Wednesday evening saw the running of the second of the three Yateley 10k races in the series, and like the first one, I ran it barefoot.

I'd had a bit of a sedentary two weeks building up to the race following the onset of the early signs of the dreaded top of foot pain (ToFP) that cropped up during my piggies hill training session on 22 June. With only a single tabata rowing session done between then and the race I went in the race very relaxed and rested with my foot feeling good too.

At 7:30pm we were sent on our way and I paid special attention to my pace. I went into this race wanting to crack 45 minutes and intended on doing so by keeping a constant pace that sat in the 4:20 min/km to 4:28 min/km range. This plan worked beautifully. I managed to remain disciplined and didn't get caught up in the excitement of the start of the race too much and managed to keep my pace more or less within this range right up until the 8th km. This included the particularly stoney tarred section along Reading road between about 5.5km and 7.2km which this time I chose not to try and avoid.

I suspect I could have kept this pace up beyond the 8km mark had it not been for what happened next... just after the 8km mark the pain on the top of my left foot returned, and with a vengeance. It was pretty damn painful, but as I'd got most of the way round, there was no way I was going to stop now - I'll probably regret this later. I quickly found it wasn't as painful if I turned my foot inwards slightly and almost rolled over my big toe (could the cause of the pain be due to a slightly outward pointing left foot?) so with my slightly adjusted gait and slower pace I headed for the finish.

Turning into the field entrance I glanced at my watch and noticed I was still on course for a sub-45 10k, so I floored it as best I could, passed a couple of people and crossed the finish line with a new PB: 44:43.

Pleased as punch I handed in my timing chip, grabbed a water and a choccy bar and headed back to the car. The pain in my left foot starting to really sink in now too. Impressively I had my official results SMS by the time I got back to my car too...

So all in all, I had a great run, except for the onset of ToFP at 8km, but that's incidental really as I'd managed to set a new PB and still had a great time. Still no sign of any photos from this or the previous race though - I'm starting wonder if they had an official photographer this year.

Now I'll have to see what happens with my left foot over the next few weeks. Hopefully it'll recover completely in time for the 3rd and final race in the series on 4 August.

Wednesday evening saw me run my first road race in over 11 years, the first of 3 in the Yateley 10k series, and what a great run and evening it was.

The Yateley 10k series is a large, well organised series of races run on the first Wednesday in June, July and August every year and thanks to it's close proximity to work, has become a bit of a tradition with the runners at work. Each year, I hear the guys talking about the races so I thought this would be a great re-introduction to road running and my first official race in the UK (at the time I registered I hadn't planned on doing any of the Parkruns).

My wife and I made our way over to Yateley and got there for about 18:30 giving me plenty of time to collect my number, timing chip (the race uses Championchips for timing), warm up, queue for the little boys room (I felt like a lady having to queue for the loo) and then make my way into the funnel that is the start of the race.

At 19:31 we were all sent on our way. Everyone except me were wearing shoes, those crazy fools . The race took us out of the school grounds onto the road. It was then a moderate climb up to the 3km mark, downhill with a little bump to the 5km mark for our first water station. Just beyond that we turned onto Reading road for a long lonely flat slog of just short of 2km before turning off, past a sponges station, the 7km mark and another water station and made our way back towards the start/finish with a short little hill just near the 9km mark to keep things interesting and to sap a little bit of that energy you saved for the final sprint home.

I thought this was a great route. Not excessively challenging, but challenging enough to keep it interesting. From a barefoot perspective, most of the route is very pleasant to run on. The only places I encountered a bit of difficulty due to excessively large stones in the tar (and a bit of fatigue) was along Reading Road between the 6 and 8km marks and a little section on Firgrove Road just before you go round the roundabout up towards Waitrose.

And now for my results:

As I mentioned above, the race uses Championchips for timing. Thankfully I knew about this before the event so purchased a triathlon timing chip ankle strap to hold my chip. I'm quite impressed with my time, especially the chip time which indicates the time it took me to cover the 10km. I definitely think a sub-45 is on the cards next time, however I need to add more 10+ km training runs to teach my feet and body to cope with the tough stuff when I'm tired.

All in all I had a great evening and am now most definitely hooked again. I'm already starting to look at other races to run other than the 3 Yateley races and have my eye on a few which involve offroad sections, so I'll have to run these in Vibrams. Hopefully I'll be able to post a photo from the race when the official photos become available.

No Parkrun today. I'm knackered from a week of insanely early shifts and the race and I know I'd want to race the Parkrun. Too much racing makes Colin a broken boy. Maybe next week.