Race Date: 11 September 2024
One of the highlights of the Paris Olympic Games has to be the men’s 10,000m. The Ethiopians worked as a team but failed to kill off the opposition who just would not go away with the race ending in a sub 60 second burn up over the final lap. Alas no British runners and, when you look around, there aren’t that many 10,000m races in the UK. Races are even scarcer for veterans where suitable events are few and far between; possibly the British Masters at Oxford, NE Masters at Jarrow and this one in London.
Millennium Arena, Battersea. Pavilion with gym and cafe but the track itself needs some work. Astroturf pitches down the back straight leads to numerous pedestrians on the track and infield.
Having run here last year, Battersea had been on the agenda for a while and enthused by the Olympic final (and a couple of beers) a look at Trainline revealed that it would be possible to travel to St Pancras and back for less than thirty quid. Masters athletics is only a sideshow really but nevertheless very important to its participants and we were warned about the need for track legal footwear so shoe choice became as important a subject as splits. As it turned out, all sorts of shoes were to be seen although anyone wearing Nike Zoom X Next% or other type of carbon plated affair would have drawn the attention of the race referee. My own (legal) shoes were Saucony Fastwich 9, an old fashioned type of racing flat very different to the type of shoe used for training and racing these days. Spikes might have been uncomfortable for those using them as the track at Battersea is in need of repair being worn through in places.
And the race itself? The subject of splits reared their ugly head early on where the proposed lap times seemed to be simply unattainable. As the field eventually sorted itself out there was a small group 20m ahead. Any sort of success now relied on closing the gap and latching on but they wouldn’t get any closer. Were they speeding up or were the Fastwitch slowing down? The splits tell a story with the seconds dripping away helplessly like a leaking tap. The last hurrah over the final kilometre simply reinforced the earlier capitulation.
So what went wrong? It was a great adventure and travelling that far for a race certainly focussed the attention. Was the race plan flawed from the outset? Track and lactate threshold work had been going very well recently and with decent weekly mileage and long run, endurance shouldn’t have been an issue. There was a ten day taper, reducing volume but maintaining intensity. The crux of the matter, apart from a simple lack of moral fibre, seems to be shoes. The logbook reveals that pre-race try outs in the track legal ones seemed to be a little slower than usual and a couple of seconds a lap over 25 laps is nearly a minute over 10,000m. The answer appears to be that, like it or not, modern shoes definitely do make a difference be it either physically or in your head.
| Pos | Name | Cat | Time |
| 13 (5) | Peter Brown | M65 | 47:33.36 |
Heat 1 had 22 finishers the first of whom was M50 Jacob Armstrong-Plieth in 39:55.01 and should probably have been seeded into Heat 2. First woman was Lisa Watson (Harvel) 46:06.64. Follow the link for full results Veterans AC 10,000m Champs 2024 . Chip timing.
Seconds ebbing away on each lap adds up and this was a minute slower than 2023 and two minutes slower than 2022.
As it is, position as the top ranked 10,000m athlete at Steel City was maintained for the third year running principally because nobody else in the club has run the 10,000m for years.