Well not long now till the Birmingham Half Marathon and on my training schedule was a 10k 'tune up' race that needed to be completed today.

So off I went to Sherwood Forest without bow and arrow but with some nice nearly new trail shoes, used only once on a 7 mile easy run around Cannock Chase, so I thought as it was advertised as a trail 10k I'll wear them and break them in a bit more.

As this was not on my race calender I had no high expectations from it, so that in mind I set a 44 minute finish, good thing was it was also a chip race.

Was a good attendance and both the 10k and 5k entrants were coralled together for the off, which was interesting as it was a bit of a squeeze at the start.

Cut a long story short it was a shale type running surface with some areas sandy and was reasonably hilly as things go, at 7k I felt I was getting a blister from the uppers of one of my shoes and resigned myself to the blistease afterwards.

On crossing the line my Garmin read 42:05 which absolutely blew my previous best away of 42:38, and on top of that I started the clock at gun time, when I checked the chip time it was 41:58 !!!! RESULT :-) I was resigned to the sub 42 minutes barrier next year as the Birmingham HM is probably going to be the last road race, as I am going to concentrate on cross country for the winter months.

Oh and by the way I leapt from 17th on age grade up to 12th.

Birmingham EDF, bring it on..