New unofficial 20 mile P.B. 2.4.01

QUOTE;

• It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.

  Charles Darwin

A Plonkers Story Of How To Get Lost In A Race!
The day started with a beautiful morning and little in the way of wind, a great day for a record attempt!
This is the 5th time I've run the Trimpell 20, first time back in 2004 where I did my P.B. of 2.05.24.
We started with a lap of a running track before moving out onto a cycle track by the Lune River.
I got in a fast moving group, a bit too fast as we were averaging just on 6 min mile pace.
By 7 miles I decided to back off and stick to my planned pace, the group I'd been in pulled away and left me on my own.
A look behind showed me an empty path, It looked like I'd have to time trial this race all on my own!
Round a corner as I came to a bridge I took a wrong turning, carrying on for some time before the back-markers in the race came straight at me from the opposite direction!
Opps! I stopped turned around and thought to hell with it!
I charged after the slower runners taking them out one by one.
I ended up doing a loop round the village for the second time before going past the bridge again adding 1.77 miles to the race route.
There was only one target for me now, race the virtual man on my Garmin to 20 miles, I'd set him to run 2 hours 3 mins for the 20 miles.
To be honest I was having a lot of fun catching and passing the guys ahead of me, I guess this is one good reason to run negative splits, far better to be passing runners than to be passed :]
At 13 miles a guy caught me up seems he had run the first half easy and was now looking for sub 2.45 marathon pace for the second half.
We kind of worked off each other, really getting some speed going!
At last I reached 19 miles on the Garmin, so it was time to push all out to try and hit my target time.
20 miles came in 2 hours 4 mins and 1 sec, the fastest I've ever run going by my Garmin by over a min!
Having reached my goal I now had almost 2 miles still to run, I slowed to a jog until the final 400m on the track where I let rip with a burst of sub 6 pace.
Total time on my Garmin 2.15 for 21.77 miles.
Interestingly it turned out that the course was short, with most peoples Garmins reading 19.92 or there abouts.
So to sum up I'm really happy to have averaged 6.12 pace for 20 miles.
this gives me great hope that a 2.45 at London is possible.
To knock off over a minute off my best recorded 20 mile race is pretty amazing as I'm only 3 days off 50!
Next road race will be the liverpool Half Marathon,.
I'll be looking for an official 1.17 or better!
GARMIN DATA