Steve Morton writes:
It was the 20th anniversary of the N.I.C.E. 10 k run on the 2nd of November 2025. Huge respect to Martin Foster and the team behind this fantastic event! Weather conditions were great and there was an excellent turn out for the race. Lots of Bournville Harriers, BRATs and various other teams out in force.
I arrived in plenty of time and headed into the public car park as I thought the N.I.C.E. parking may have been filled. Grumpy old man moments: no facility to pay for parking without downloading a stupid app and doing financial stuff on my phone – no! Once parked up out on a nearby road I headed to the centre and picked up my race number.
I warmed up a little by jogging through the park. Junior parkrun was finishing and it was good to see the kids enjoying themselves and cheered on by the volunteer marshals.
My aim going into this race was to average 4:30 minutes per kilometre. This would have given me a time of around 45 minutes – just under the current club record time for the V65 male category. My training had indicated that this was quite possible. However, that was not to be!
It’s a downhill start to the race and even though we were advised to take it easy at the beginning it was still quite hard to hold back! After several hundred metres I settled into a pace that felt comfortable and with the foot off the gas to a certain extent. Lots of runners overtaking me at this stage. I settled into a good rhythm and was feeling great but disaster was just around the corner – well just on a corner actually. A leafy corner which in part rivalled that ice rink in the centre of Brum for slipperiness. Down I went in a crashing heap totally surprised and a bit shocked. Several people came to help me including a kind marshal and I waved them on in my eagerness to get up and continue the race. Unfortunately, I was carrying my car keys and these had flown from my hand when I fell. What seemed like an eternity was then spent searching for my keys with help from the marshal. She obviously had the more important job of directing all the runners on the course but thankfully managed to also find my keys. In reality it was probably just under a minute before I started running again.
My careful pacing was abandoned as I tried to claw back the lost time. Overtaking other runners I began to sound like a huffing puffing steam train as I pushed maybe a little too hard to get back on track (note to self: stop it with the train analogies!). The last half of the race was almost enjoyable as I made progress and continued to move through the field. Towards the end I accepted that this time I was not going to break any records but I still managed a sprint at the end and pipped a BRAT at the finish line. My unofficial time was 46:06 and all in all I am pleased with that.
I headed back to the centre to get cleaned up. There weren’t any showers available (I think) so I just asked a first aider to clean my bloodied arm before heading off home for a bath. I had a sore hip and side for a while but I am now fully recovered and looking forward to more running! Roll on the Telford 10k in December!