Held at the biggest recreation ground in the city, the Coventry War Memorial Park, the Chase the Sun 10k was a great way for the venue to celebrate its 101st year since opening in 1921. And Bournemouth AC woman Ella Preston was on hand to help commemorate the occasion by competing in the race, which took place at 7pm on a Wednesday evening.

Originally based in Coventry, Ella would have known her way round the park and considering it was a four lap route, she certainly would have by end! The general premise of the race was to complete the course before the sun goes down and of course, as it was coming to end of summer, the daylight hours were already beginning to reduce with each day that passes.

Ella’s best 10k time thus far was the 49:24 she managed at the Round the Lakes 10k in Poole Park on her Bournemouth AC debut. With the course in that race being so flat and fast, that will prove a tough target to beat.

The Coventry Chase the Sun 10k was on an off-road course and there were a few undulations to tackle along the way. There was a fair bit of downhill in the first mile and Ella got through that quite quickly in 7:36. The next mile she went through at 8:03 pace before keeping it steady at around 8:15 pace for the third and fourth miles.

Getting through the fifth mile in 8:26 pace and the sixth mile at 8:32, all the remained was the last 0.2 miles which included the run-in to the finish. Getting over the line in a time of 50:51, Ella was the 12th female to finish out of 73 and came 66th in the overall standings.

Although she found it a touch repetitive going round the same loop four times, once she got into the swing of things, she felt pretty good and her performance reflects that. There were 198 participants in the race in total.

It was a fair bit quicker than she ran in her previous race which was the Castle Howard Multisport Festival 10k. That was actually a pretty tough course and Ella secured a time of 55:39 and finished as 3rd lady.

As a very keen parkrun attendee, Ella has been working her way through the alphabet of locations and there can’t be many of them she’s got left now. She also likes to play a bit of squash as well so sport is very much at the forefront of her every day activity.