Final Result
Name Time Pos. (Race)
Andrew Shirres 00:45:20 1158
Overall Results (excluding elite and disabled althletes)
Name Pos. (Search)
Andrew Shirres 825 out of 12881
Results for Male ages 20-29
Name Pos. (Search)
Andrew Shirres 275 out of 2133
For those with a bit more time, the full story started on Saturday! Waking up early for the excitement of FA Cup final day I decided to pack my back. It was at this point I realised that I'd lost my number and microchip for recording the time! After tearing the flat to bits, I came to the conclusion that in one of my rare tidying up spree's, I must have thrown it in the bin!!!!!!! Disaster!!!!!!!!
With only two hours to kick off, I had to get into Manchester, confess to my stupidity to the Great Run officials and hope they took a sympathetic view. Thankfully it seems that they expect a certain number of people like me every year, so I got a replacement number and managed to get back with half hour to spare in time to watch the FA Cup final.
The big race day arrived and the atmosphere was fantastic! The excitement and camaraderie was something else, and as the wave I was in approached the start line the crowd reached fever pitch. A quick song from the Halle orchestra and we were away!
The first 400m were at walking pace, some people pretended to jog, but me and Mark, just walked. An overtaking lane somehow developed and we quickly got in that. However with all the crowd progress was slower than I would have liked.
As I passed the Museum of Science and Industry, I overtook two army recruits. My pride in out running two of Britain's finest, was short lived when I realised that they were carrying fully loaded backpacks! As Mark and me were heading towards Old Trafford on Bridgewater Way, we caught up with one of my friends known as Pie. He'd started off in the wave in front, so I knew we were going at a good pace!
There were a few pinch points around the course where track narrowed and people bunched and overtaking was impossible. As we were leaving Old Trafford on the return leg, Mark and I managed to get in the wake of wheel chair athlete as he carved his way through the crowd! A great idea if you can manage it but as this part of the course was mainly down hill, keeping up with him became too much of a challenge and we were left to battle it out with the masses. Somewhere around here we overtook another friend of mine called Mini though I didn't see him sadly.
Next was the home straight on Deansgate and any thought of a sprint finish quickly evaporated with the huge crush developing ahead. I crossed the line in a bit of a daze from the run as it turned out I'd managed to put in a personal best!. A big credit has to go to my running partner Mark for much of the race, who in the last kilometre, despite getting a broken rib on Easter week and having to miss 7 weeks worth of training, managed to come back and finish first out of our group in an incredible time of 44:33
A big group picture of those of us who managed to meet at the end is below...
Big Pete, Me, Mini, Pie!
Andy
