Sunday 26th January 2025

A fantastic report of a wonderful morning, by Linford Crusty 🍪(Rob Chrystie) 🖤❤️

Sunday 26th January saw 1253 runners take part and finish the Furley Page Canterbury 10 Mile race. This is a long standing event organised by Invicta East Kent AC and held on country roads and paths to the East of the City. Entries sold out this year.

After running a hilly 10 miler last September,  I decided i quite liked it as a race distance. It gives me enough time to warm up and get into my stride but doesn’t require a massive amount of preparation, like a marathon for example. Not really knowing anything about this event other than it attracts fast runners, i entered just before Christmas, in the hope I would better my previous effort (which I was already pretty proud of to be honest).

Leading up to race day, it became apparent that the course isn’t all that flat! This was then realised in person as I made my way around the ‘undulating’ course. There were also farm tracks and small off road sections to negotiate. I totally took the wrong shoes!

It was a cold morning with a biting wind, but thankfully dry. So I opted for an extra layer under my vest, gloves and a hat before heading down to the start. I had hoped to see Mark (Pope) in the crowd of runners, but I had to settle for a chat with a couple of Eastbourne Rovers instead!

The 9am start was a little delayed, but the mayor got us away without issue.

Personally, I knew I’d be in for a tough day at the office. I haven’t been coping well with recurring injuries/niggles/weird numbness in the last few weeks and I can only ignore them for so long. 2km (yes I like the metric system) in, and my lower back started giving me grief. My breathing also seemed quite laboured and I realised I was already off my target pace. However, I told myself I would do the best I could for that particular day and persevered.

I hit 10km in about 38 minutes, but was starting to fatigue a bit and already feeling muscle soreness in a few other areas. Others around me were still running a similar speed though, which kept me focused. I wasn’t quitting today!

I crossed the line in 1:02:28 (chip time 1:02:27), which, initially, I was disappointed by – rather foolishly.

It took me a bit of time to rationalise this and remind myself of exactly how far I’d come. Although I’ve always been a runner at heart, physically I haven’t! The journey back has been hard but it continues. I have to accept that I am older now and my body will sometimes fail me.  Occasionally, it is nice to test myself against the clock, but I have to remember intrinsically there are other motivations too. Sheer enjoyment of the sport is the main one, I honestly cherish every run because, selfishly, it is part of my journey and actually i don’t know how long I can keep this running malarkey going for. Anyway, I digress.

Having looked through the archives though, I can say I did actually achieve a PB by 3 seconds!!! So, it turns out the above was all nonsense and the body hasn’t failed me after all.

Right enough about me, there were over 1200 other people out there, one of whom, was our very own Coach Popey!

He was looking very cheery when I saw him, which is quite remarkable as he was pushing on at a heck of a pace. Then with about 800m to go he casually drops into conversation that he was hoping for sub 1:15. My legs could hardly move at this point, so I mustered a shout that was more like a whimper of ‘you’re going to smash it!’ and then in the blink of an eye he was gone.

I found Mark afterwards and indeed, he had smashed it. He came in 258th with a 1:14:08 gun time, but an amazing 1:13:34 chip time. Even more remarkably, this was after already doing 25 days of the accumulator.

Overall, it’s a decent, well organised event, but don’t underestimate the hills. They’re not horrendous, but they are there. The encouragement was surprisingly good for 9am on a Sunday and traffic was well managed. I did feel it was a bit mean that the sign for the second water station said it was still 3 miles away though!

The winning time was a ludicrous 51:10 by Cole Gibbens from Tonbridge AC, who beat Brighton and Chester Marathon winner Marshall Smith by about a minute.

Rebecca Weston from Invicta was the first lady to cross the line. Her time was 57:17…yes, you read that right!