On the 20th July I woke up feeling nervous and excited. I laced up my shoes and went off for a easy 20 minute jog, I still had 12 hours until my race. My body was feeling really good, I had done all the hard work back in New Zealand. All I had to do that night was run smart and stay relaxed and I would achieve my goal of breaking the New Zealand junior 10,000m record.
When we walked out onto the track the weather was prefect, not a breath of wind. I did a few strides, my legs were feeling good. After having about 8 minutes on the track to do our strides and warm up drills we got called up to the line. The gun went and we all took off, I remember the first lap was in 68sec then the next was 74sec with the first 2km done in 6.01. Then all of a sudden the Kenyans went crazy with half the field trying to go with them the rest wondering what to do. I stayed back and got into a rhythm running laps of 69-70sec.
I was working with Mohamed Ahmed of Canada sharing the lead. We were slowly picking off runners who had gone out too hard with the leaders, we reached the first 5km in 14.42 and then with 2km to go we started to pick up the pace.
I ended up finishing 5th running a 48sec P.B and breaking the New Zealand junior 10,000m record (old record was 29mins 27sec). My time was 29 mins14.23secs.
The plan for the rest of the season is to keep building up my fitness. I will run a few low key XC races over the next few weeks. My next big race will be at Zatopeak where I will race the 3000m.
Thanks for reading,
Aaron Pulford
