What a start to the day, blistering sunshine, not quite what I had hoped for to do my first 10K race, in fact my first competitive run since school, so after a liberal splashing of Sun block we depart for County Hall.

The warm up routine was a tremendous laugh almost 4000 people waving their hands in the air doing various stretches. Then ‘the off’, we ran both lengths of Lloyd George Avenue with the large crowd cheering supportively.

The organisers had grouped us in our respected estimated completion times, so straight away I was in at a comfortable pace, we continued through the Bay on to the link road towards Cogan, the first obstacle was the up hill section to Cogan but luckily that was followed very closely by a downhill section on to the marina, from there we headed down to the lock gates and across the barrage.

In the middle of the barrage the organisers had placed a shower unit across the track, Wow! was it cold, but hugely refreshing, so reinvigorated we head on to the dock and Cardiff Bay, around the rear of the Millennium Centre and on to the finish at Roald Dahl Plaza.

Some of the figures from my running equipment are:

Average speed 6.5 mph

Average heart rate 165 bpm

Max heart rate 180 bpm

I took 9068 steps

And I burnt approx 1250 calories

The feeling of completing the run was tremendous. I had run faster than I had ever run during training, completing the course in 55 minutes and 53 seconds and considering the temperature was 30 degrees when we finished I was very happy indeed!