I must compliment the organisers on a first class job, and thank the hordes of helpful volunteers who stood in the rain for hours, and stayed cheerful through the whole thing. Course was new this year, out and back instead of loop, rolling countryside, rain and 50F. This is a smallish local race, 258 runners, nice friendly atmosphere. I was hoping for 1:45, and reached the turnaround just under 52 minutes, so felt it should be easy as the course is a bit more uphill on the "out" so the "back" leg should be a bit faster. Decided to go for a PB and ran hard, saw the clock at the finish read 1:41:30 as I crossed the line, really exhausted. Official chip timed finish shows on the website as 1:43:25, so a bit of a let-down, but generally pretty happy. Went to *$ afterwards with my son, so a good day overall. Simon.

Starbucks! Coffee- sorry. Actually my Garmin agreed with the chip timing, except that I was too exhausted to remember to push the button at the end! So the fancy digital finish line clock was off by a couple of minutes. My first 10k was 49:24 and second was 48:30, so this gives me 5minutes and 31 seconds to finish the last 1 km and change, which is clearly about right. I have no problem with the time they gave me, in fact I am quite pleased. Simon.

Yes, Jules, I am going for under 100 (nice round number!) minutes in October, on a faster course. I was thinking 1:38 might be possible, but I was really trashed on Sunday, had to lean on the fence at the finish to stay upright, so I am not sure I can get more than 5 minutes off that time. Perhaps better training will help.

congrats on the PR Simon, You are speedy! Ayola