Second Place

Racing in May can be strange. One week you're running 10 kilometres in 12 degrees, a week later you don't know what hit you when you're lining up late at night in 26 degrees for a 5k. No acclimatising, it just flips from one extreme to the other. A few years ago we still had snow in May. That's just how that month works, I guess. Still I thought I was reasonably well prepared for a race in the heat, which I owed to a trip to Mallorca a few weeks earlier. Ten days, similar temperatures. A bit of a coincidence of course, as I didn't know that this 5k race would be so hot. But it helped. Before the race started, I had one rule for myself: don't go out too hard. Especially in a 5k, the first three or four kilometers need to feel fairly relaxed for me. After that I see what's left in the tank. Just before the final kilometer I caught up to a group of three, who were second, third and fourth place at that point. But I quickly noticed they were struggling. They had nothing left. I still felt…