20 November 2016

5000m 16:22.04

This was a Queensland Athletics Open meet at the Queensland State Athletics Facility ANZ Stadium Saturday evening. Start time 6:00pm just a bit too warm at that time and wind blew up after it being calm all day. Only 8 entrants in the men's two in the girls , only one showed up so we went off together.
Originally they had scheduled two women races and two men's and a 7:00pm start time would have been far preferable.
The state of track distance running is shocking if we can only get 8 entrants for a 5000m race. The 800m had 4 heats, which shows that the Athletes are there but they don't want to run 5000 on the track. Big shame for me as I had been hoping to get some help to run 16:00.
Saying that, there were two quality guys in our race Aiden Hobbs and Charles Chambers
with Brendan Press providing 3:00km pacing duties for 3km.
At the gun the 3 young dudes headed off to immediately gap Peter Bracken and myself, as I tucked in behind Peter for 200m but 38 was way too slow so I took his lead and picked it up. There was no time at the 200m mark (race start line) just at the finish line an official appeared to be calling out random numbers that hardly corresponded to our actual times or even lap times.
Did hear 3000m was 9:45 so I had fallen off pace suffering in the wind and heat. Peter (age35) stuck to my arse like a leech with occasional moves to my shoulder but never took it on once!!!
Well not until the final 120m when he rounded me and sprinted past like he was racing me! We get very few opportunities to run 5000m in evening track meets (only two a year!) So it was disappointing to not get the entrants and not get any help to run a quicker time.
Saying that, 16:22 puts me #3 in the M55 World Rankings this year, and by way of further context only 5 pommie M55 have ever run faster (all time) and it ranks about 30th fastest athlete on the all-time World M55 list.
M55 5000m 2016 World Rankings

M55 5000m All time World rankings


M55 5000m All time British Rankings (Power of 10)

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