Kings Head Canter 5K Preview

I love the Kings Head Canter. It's just such a fun event. OK, it's 5K, which is hard, especially if it's uphill, which kilometres 2, 3 and 4 are, as you head from Chiddingly to East Hoathly — or as the locals would describe it, from the Six Bells to the Kings Head. A pub, right at the finish line, ready to serve participants with a free beer. Or in my case, an Appletiser 🍺🤦‍♂️

It's a point-to-point 5K, which normally is a real pain in the backside, but given there's a shortcut on the Wealdway, it's actually quite a pleasant warm-up, if you're smart and park at the finish. Anyone who's done the Weald Challenge will be familiar with that trail.

It's a small event with a capacity of 300 runners. The start is narrow, but this year they've introduced chip timing, so no need to be close to the start line, unless your chasing a top 20 finish.

The route is all local country roads, and the hills, whilst frustrating, are relatively gradual, and still allow for a decent time. Something else is new this year: Open Podium. If you sign up before Monday, find Kings Head Canter on our race listings and add it to your races, you'll be in with a chance of becoming the first winner of an Open Podium target time race. Cool, right? Although it will be a trial race before we launch properly ahead of the BBB10K.

But fewer entrants means more chance of success. You don't need to cross the line ahead of all the Open Podium users, you just need to beat your target time by more than they do. Simples.

I've even put a PB Runner T-shirt up as a prize for anyone who likes wearing orange. All this for free, of course.

I've not even mentioned the best part. No, not the hills, but the pacing plan you'll get for the race. That's right, your target time is broken down into splits, kilometres or miles, whatever your preference, and you can see how fast you should run each split to achieve your target time.

As someone coming back from injury, and yet to run my best times this year, I'm quietly confident my target time puts me in with a shot of winning my own prize.

I am most excited by trying to beat the target that Open Podium has set. I'll be manually plugging my target splits into my Garmin's Pace Pro feature, and tracking my progress after each kilometre.

Having studied the splits, I know in the past I will definitely have pushed too hard up the hills, leaving nothing left for a strong finish, like so many runners do in these races.

This year I'm confident I can hold back slightly through that tough stretch, and then really let fly down the hill towards the finish line. In fact, it's been a while since I've been this excited for running a 5K race. And that's all down to Open Podium.

So get yourself signed up and see your target times for upcoming races. At the moment we're mainly focused on races in the South East, but hoping to expand — we just want to make sure the algorithms work first, and runners are given fair target times.

I hope to see you at the Kings Head Canter on Monday.