Shakespeare Half Marathon - 27 April 2008...

Distance: 13.1 miles

In a time of...
hh:mm:ss
01:26:58

Finishing Position: 32
Number of finishers: 1845
Putting me in the top: 1.73%

This was my first half marathon of 2008, and in fact my first half marathon for precisely one year - my last being this same event in 2007.

I'd been waiting for this race to come around for some time, and sort of viewed this as my main race of the season. I was itching to get to the start line, and everything in the build up had been going pretty well - bar watching the football yesterday (Coventry Vs Wolves), which meant that instead of resting all day I was standing up for around 4 hours - and I hate standing!

I'd been quite nervous and couldn't wait for morning to come round so I could wake up and get going. Breakfast was porridge with currants, dried apricot and papaya with soya - a pint of water, then a Lucozade Sport. Looking out the window, it was clear once again that the muppets at the met office really haven't got a clue - as the forecasted 'rain all night and heavy rain all day' was in fact NO rain all night, and no sign of it raining anytime soon! I picked up my friend Howard who was also running (and who has beaten me for the past two years on this course) and headed for Stratford, and onwards to the start.

As is the norm with this race now, it was a bit of a struggle to get anywhere near the front at the start and again after the hooter sounded, I found myself getting stuck behind fun runners who quite simply shouldn't have been anywhere near the front. Anyway, in my anger, I overtook them at the first chance I had; I think the occasion started to get the better of me and fuelled on adrenaline I pushed on without realising - something which looking back is probably the stupidest thing I could've done.

A lap around the town centre and we passed the 1mile marker. I looked down at the stopwatch (which I'd started probably around 10-20secs after the start having forgotten to set it when I crossed the start line) - 5:22 (so around 5:32-5:42 for the mile). Ah. Not good. Too fast.

I was aiming for a finish time of 1:25:00, though if I'm honest part of me had hoped I would exceed expectations and manage a time of about 1:22:00 - which according to race time predictors I should've been able to manage based on my 10k time (though admittedly my endurance wasn't quite where I wanted it to be). Basically I needed to be on a pace of around 6:15-6:30 per mile (the former would bring around 1:22:00, latter 1:25:00)...

I settled back into pace, and whilst I didn't feel perfectly comfortable, I was able to reach mile 7 with an average mile split of 6:24 (excluding the 1st mile which brought the average down to around 6:16/mi). I knew mile 7-8 would be slow due to a big hill, but I was already starting to feel tired and wondering how much longer I could keep the pace up. I climbed the hill, and descended well, putting a gap between myself and the first female runner who I'd been running with for the past few miles. Then at the bottom of the hill, all was flat - and I just seemed to stop.

No matter how hard I tried I couldn't match the pace I had in the first half, mile splits were getting worse and worse as my hamstrings tightened up and at mile 11-12 they sunk to their lowest, a split of 7:11 on a completely flat section of the course - around 45secs per mile off minimum goal pace. Mile 12-13 I managed to claw back to the 6:54(ish) pace that had been the norm since mile 8. For the first time in a long time I really did question what an earth I was doing putting myself through this kind of pain - from the 10mile marker I wanted to stop and walk, but managed to drag myself through the last few miles (knowing that if I stopped, I'd never manage to get going again!). I hung in there and even managed to raise the pace a little coming down the home straight. I'd finished.