EDF Birmingham Half Marathon - 11 October 2009...

Distance: 13.1 miles

In a time of...
hh:mm:ss
01:16:37 Personal Best!!!

Finishing Position: 31
Number of finishers: 10042
Putting me in the top: 0.30%

Nearly six months had passed since my last half marathon, which was the Shakespeare Half, back in April. There I ran what I felt was a disappointing race and finished outside my target time (which seems to be a common occurrence for me at the Shakespeare Half). So what time should I have been targeting for this race? I'd heard the course was fast and pretty flat - and my training had come on quite a bit over the past few months, so I felt I could really start to do the distance justice. That said, a weeks break in North Wales, including walking Snowdon, meant I'd done no running at all for a period of 5 days, and returned the weekend before the race feeling sluggish and below peak form. It was most disheartening, but as the week progressed I was beginning to feel more like my normal self again.

I approached the race with the mindset that I wanted to go sub 1:18 - that was the target I'd set myself at the beginning of 2009, so that was my main target, I hoped I just about could break 1:17:30 and secretly dreamed of sub 1:17, but wasn't going to hold my breath. Not knowing where my ability for the distance lay, I decided that I would go against my normal approach of just running based on how I feel, and instead decided to use a timepiece (Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS device) to pace myself. I would aim for an average pace of 5:55/mi and then take over and run according to how I felt in the latter stages. This should've seen me in under 1:18, and given me scope to do even better if I felt good.

A very crowded start area meant it took a while and several attempts to line up somewhere that resembled my running ability - frustratingly there were fun runners and walkers who'd positioned themselves up with the faster runners and no doubt caused a lot of hassle for faster runners stuck behind them.

I was frustrated as the race got underway - the organisers set off the green/elite starting pen, and then held the orange starting pen (which I was in) back... not allowing us to start running for another half a minute or so - meaning that runners who I should've been racing against for position had been given half a minutes lead!! (Sort it out for next year please organisers!)

The race started at a very fast pace - I let runners disappear off ahead of me and tried to hold myself back, though it was hard to gauge speed with people flying ahead, and people falling back, and the course itself being mostly downhill for the first mile.

My memory of the race is now a little fuzzy (having waited too long to write the report), though I remember checking my Garmin regularly to ensure I was on pace - the course was very enjoyable and the support was fantastic! I felt very comfortable and after much umming and arring I decided somewhere around 7-8mi that enough was enough, I felt strong and I was going to run how I felt rather than using the watch to pace me. Suddenly I was running a lot faster, going from a 6min+ mile to near 10k pace, but feeling very strong.

I maintained the pace and was closing/passing people throughout the latter stages of the race - I was going over and over in my head what sort of finish time I could expect, but I struggled to do the maths... or at least I thought I did. I'd somehow worked out that if I could maintain my current pace, that a 1:15:XX time was possible. "Nah, that can't be right" I thought... well it wasn't right - a sub 1:16 time would have been possible, but it would've involved a very fast last two miles, somewhere around 10k pace. I honestly think that I may have managed it if it weren't for the seemingly endless climb in the final mile.

Pace dropped dramatically and where I still felt very strong reaching 12mi, I was completely dead on my feet and struggling to maintain momentum by the time the finish line came into sight. I tried to pick up the pace for a fast finish but could only manage something half hearted. Still... my Garmin said I'd manage sub 1:17, so I was absolutely ecstatic!

The race also gave me some unexpected publicity - I appeared in the Birmingham Mail newspaper the following day, and was even seen on 'Central News' for a few seconds. Brilliant!