The Milton Keynes Marathon Weekend is always a huge attraction with competitors from far and wide travelling to northern Buckinghamshire to try their luck, either in the 5k Rocket race, the Half Marathon or the Full Marathon.

The routes are predominantly flat in profile, mostly across roads in and around the Milton Keynes area but each race includes a glorious finish in the magnificent MK Stadium, home of course to the Milton Keynes Dons.

For this year’s race, Bournemouth AC member László Tóth had entered both the Rocket 5k and on the Saturday and the Marathon on Sunday. He was hoping he might finish quite high up in the 5k race if he has a good run and could potentially have been a contender to win it.

Unfortunately, though, before the weekend arrived, László was struck down with a back injury which has kept him out of action ever since. The result unfortunately for Laszlo meant that he was unable to compete in either race. It was a real blow for László but it’s just one of those things that unfortunately does happen to runners from time to time.

One BAC member who did manage to make it to Milton Keynes though was Josh Cole, who was competing in the Half Marathon race on the Sunday. He was also thinking that if he has a good run, he could be a contender to win it, which would be a huge accolade.

Josh was out of blocks at breakneck speed, attempting to stay with the early pace setters. At the 10k stage in the race he was around a minute and a half down on the top 3 in the race who had broken away from the lead pack.

It was still a good run from Josh thus far though and he’d reached the 10k point in 35 minutes 23 seconds. Unfortunately though he’d just gone off that bit too quickly and paid the price for it in the latter stages of the race. The second half became a bit of a slog and Josh fell of the pace quite a bit, drifting further away from the leaders.

By the time he reached the finish he’d fallen from 6^th place to 10^th and he crossed the line in a time of 1:20:57. By most peoples’ standards this would still be a stunning team but for Josh it was tinged with disappointment. He knew full well that if he’d managed the race better instead of try to stick with the race leaders early on he would’ve been much stronger in the second half.

Nevertheless, he’d still managed a top 10 finish in a race that featured over 3,200 finishers, so that is still something to be proud of by any standard.

You live and learn though in running and no matter how experienced or how fast you are, there are always going to be races where you don’t get the strategy quite right and it proves costly in the end. Josh is determined to bounce back though and is now on the lookout for a 10k race that can do well in to get himself back on track.