Birell Prague 10k: 3 September 2022

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1 1 Charles Pridgeon 44:01 V55 Serpentine 71.9% 7:05

Report

The Prague Birell 10K is brilliantly organised as you would expect from a World Athletics Federation “Label Road Race”. The field of approx. 4500 is complemented by a further 3500 in a women-only 5k run earlier on the day. The 10k is a mixed event with some world class names and impressive times are run on this flat course. Irene Cheptai of Kenya, the 2017 world cross-country champion, was this year’s winner of the Birell 10k in just a shade over 30 minutes. In the men’s race 9 runners went under 28 minutes and a further 6 under 29 minutes. The race was run by Hicham Amghar of Morocco (27:24), edging out Tadese Worku of Ethiopia. World number 1 over the distance, Rhonex Kipruto was 8th in 27:53. Fastest Brit was Paulos Surafel who came 23rd in 29:48.

For ordinary mortals the race should be a bonus on a visit to the beautiful city of Prague. The start is seeded, the course is wide and for the first few hundred metres rows of speakers blast out Smetana’s “Vlatva” from “Ma Vlast”; you will have heard this symphonic poem many times if you listen to classical music – it’s known in English as the “Moldau”. To hear it at 100 decibels as you power down the first quarter mile in the town for which it was written was surreal and quite rousing. Not the usual disco thumping stuff !

The principal trouble on the course is cobbles, probably about 2km in all, at the beginning, end and around the 6k mark. The first half of the race is a straight out and back and incredibly fast, the second half takes you over a low bridge to the other side of the river, along it and back over a second bridge. A finishing straight of about 800 metres, of which about 400 metres is uphill on cobbles is fabulous, with incredible crowd support. The other challenging thing is the 19:30 evening start time. You start when it’s still light and at some point on the course you realise it has gotten dark and you’re running flat out at night. All-in-all a memorable experience !

Race report kindly provided by Charles Pridgeon.

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