Whilst back in his native country of Poland visiting relatives and friends, Jacek Cieluszecki took to the start line of the City Trail Bydgoszcz.

The City Trail is a series of 5k trail races that take place in different cities across Poland during the autumn and winter. In fact Jacek’s friend is the co-founder of the event.

Due to his nightshift work pattern, Jacek’s running mostly consists of short commute runs and the occasional short interval session. Hence he doesn’t get to do many races or even many parkruns and isn’t focusing too much on running at the present time. He is doing enough to keep himself fit and fast though and to be fair, it’s hard to imagine JC ever not being fast!

The City Trail races attract runners of all different standards but they can be very competitive at the front of the field. The Bydgoszcz one that Jacek took part in certainly was.

On the day of the race, it was freezing cold in Bydgoszcz and most of the runners were wrapped up well and layered up to the max. That didn’t stop Jack making an explosive start though, going through the first mile in 5:03.

He then followed that up with a 5:21 for his second mile split and then a 5:14 for his third. That was enough to get him to the line in 15:38 which put him in 4th position out of the 506 participants. He was also 1st in the M45 category.

Krzysztof Gosiewski won the race in 14:47, with Damian Rudnik taking 2nd in 15:05 and Jakub Teleja getting 3rd in 15:26. 11 men finished in under 17 minutes and 25 were under 18 minutes.

It is impressive to see that JC can still perform to that level when his training volume is fairly low, certainly in comparison to what he used to. Most weeks his longest run will be four or five miles. That’s probably why recently, if he has raced, it’s tended to be over a shorter distance as opposed to an endurance event. One thing is for sure though and that is, if Jacek is on the start line of race, his rivals are going to have to some to beat him.