It was a lovely evening for running in Milton Keynes last night, as nine LBAC members went over to the Open University for the final race of the East Midlands Grand Prix Series which was the MK 10K.

It's a pretty flat course in general, with one steady hill just after 8K and only a few fairly sharp turns to possibly slow you down, so with a warm evening and lots of confidence after a weekend of relaying across Bedfordshire hopes were high for fast times.

There were three of our ladies in the race and they took slightly different approaches to it. Kate Johnson went off at around 7:30 pace for the first mile, which was maybe slightly ambitious, but showed that her speed work from the previous evening had inspired her. Although she then did slow somewhat, a fast last mile around the OU site enabled her to come home in 53:23 and record a new PB.

Coralie Anderson is fast becoming in regular in the purple and yellow, but has always taken the approach to not wear a watch when running and even avoided looking at the clock on the finish line so was delighted when she was told her time was around 47 minutes as her previous best was 48. In actual fact she ran 46:22 so should be over the moon with that run.

Amy Inchley was the other female rep out on the course and really wasn't up for it, after two blinding runs on Saturday. However, with a whole bunch of friends from MK near to her on the course, she ran pretty consistently all the way around to gradually pick lots of them off and come home with another good time. She was 14 seconds slower than her PB at Silverstone in May with 42:29.

On the boys front, Chris Williams started at PB pace but struggled on the second half of the course to come home in 44:40 which he was disappointed with, but there are plenty more 10K's. Continuing his return from injury, and following a 20 mile training run on Sunday Pete Mack wasn't really looking for a good time but just a decent run-out and so was fairly indifferent about his 36:53 that most people would kill for!

Chris Norman has done this race a few times before and has always had a lousy run out so wasn't exactly bursting with enthusiasm at the start, particularly as this was his third race in four days! However, his luck had to change at some point as he ran strongly around the course, battling with friends from MK and Ampthill all the way and ran an extremely consistent pace to smash his PB by well over a minute to record 36:12 and get into the top thirty in a high quality field.

Always taking the positive approach to racing, Adam Haylock was also doing his third race in four days, but bounded over to the start hoping to control his start a little more than last year! He wasn't overly successful on that front, but after a "keen" first mile did run a very even pace as well to get a 40 second PB too as he chased Pete around the route.

At the start of the race Jordan foolishly asked Andy I what his PB was and got a long boring answer, but did decide that using Andy as a pacemaker might help drag him round. as a result, the two of them were never more than a few seconds apart, with Andy leading most of the way, but struggling a bit just after halfway and encouraging Jordan to push on. As it turned out, on this occasion – and it's probably one of the final ones – Andy did just manage to get ahead of Jordan in the last couple of Kms to finish 15^th in 35:23 with JC just behind in 16^th and 35:28 that meant a seven second PB for him.

 In terms of the team competitions on the night, the ladies earned a very respectable 8^th place out of 13 while the boys were 4^th out of 18. All in all a pretty good night for the club.