First half marathon down!
Yes dear reader, I managed to get through the first half marathon of the training plan, getting through 21.30km (13.1 miles if you are old school) in 1 hour, 58 minutes and 38 seconds, smashing my previous personal best of 2 hours, 14 minutes, 59 seconds in the process.
But bugger me was it cold. The course was four and a bit laps of Dorney lake, just outside Windsor. It is actually going to be used for the Olympic rowing and was just a big, open area. Which means there was absolutely no shelter from the wind at all (see photo).
Indeed, everyone else was there in their long sleeves and running tights, but I was just in my standard running shirt and shorts. At one point the wind was so strong I was actually running at an angle to make sure I stayed upright.
The race got underway at 10.15 as loads of people were stuck in the car park, by which time I was even colder. I decided to stick with the 9 minute mile pacer, which should bring me home in 1 hour 58 minutes, but after the first lap she was defiantly going faster than that, with my GPS watch telling me that at ¼ distance we had only been going for 28 minutes, giving a finish time of 1 hours 52. To be honest I was just aiming to beat my previous best and decided to let the pacer go, slowing to catch a drink (not a proper one though. Not yet).
The second lap was no great problem either and aside from slowing a few times to have something to drink I was carried on motoring round. Now though I was starting to get really bored – it is a big open lake, there is not much to look at and by now the crowd had thinned out a lot so I was more or less running on my own. Apart from when I was lapped by the eventual leader. Yes, that’s right, lapped already, although no one else overtook me for a while.
By lap three I was starting to flag a bit, so had a couple of Jellybabies to cheer myself up a bit and I carried on plodding round. Looking back at my split times it was around here that I dropped from doing 1km in 5 minutes 25 seconds ish to 5.35 but I was still keeping up a decent pace. Indeed, as I crossed the line to start the final lap I realised I had 33 minutes to do it in and still come in at less than two hours, which was a good jobs as the final 3km were pretty difficult – I was just running out of energy. Still, it didn’t stop me absolutely hooning over the line, overtaking around 20 people in the process to set my time.
The tops of my knees/bottom of my thighs hurt a bit after the race but once I got my breath back I was feeling surprisingly ok, though the thought of doing 8 laps, which is what the marathon would be, plus hills is something I am still not that comfortable with.
Still, a decent time achieved and I went to a fancy dress party on Saturday night as the young Indiana Jones before getting to bed around 3am. My legs and right shoulder were still sore and tight on Sunday morning but today I am feeling back to normal, and should be heading to the gym after work for a slow 5km as a warm down before football tomorrow and something a bit longer on Wednesday.
If you are impressed that I have even managed to get this far then you can sponsor me at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/runningfatbloke, where I am raising money for the Willow Foundation, which provides special days to seriously ill young adults.
No comments:
Post a Comment