The challenge that I set myself earlier this year I have achieved J This was a personal challenge – one that for some reason I felt I needed to do. I’m told that I’m quite a motivated person (doesn’t always feel that way to me!) and that I can be quite hard on myself. I’m probably coming to realise that that is true…… If I’m finding things hard, I tend to push myself even harder – I suppose it is a distraction technique!
So Sunday morning arrived, surprise surprise I’d not slept particularly well but kit was all ready so I was soon up and dressed; the challenge of getting contact lenses in first thing in the morning with slightly shaky hands was conquered! And I was ready to go. As always I wanted to set off nice and early to make sure we were there in plenty of time. I’m lucky that my OH is happy to pander to this and was ready nice and early which meant no problem parking when we got to Bridlington (well, until the machine in the car park wouldn’t take coins anymore – so we had to sort out paying with a card!).
As usual the first stop was the loo (nervous wee’s always happen!), and then on to find the start line. It was so nice this time that thanks to parkrun I knew quite a lot of people – lot of chatter whilst we waited for the start. Time to strip off the layers and have a quick warm up (and another loo stop!).
And then we were at the start ! I was chattering away and taking a group photo for a local club, missed the countdown to the start and then we were off! The target time was 2:10:xx I really wanted to come in under this time. After my long run a fortnight ago where the distance over a fairly flat course had come in at just under 2:02:00 I was hoping that this was a realistic target.
I tried really hard not to get pulled along at the start (harder then you can imagine !) and find a pace to settle at. I’d already decided that I would only look at my watch as it beeped for each mile and try to run to feel instead of aimed for a specific pace all the time. In my head I was breaking the course down into chunks:
- First section from Bridlington to Flamborough – tick off that village.
- Next up to Bempton – tick off that village
- Back to Bridlington – tick
- Into Sewerby – tick
- Along the sea front back onto Bridlington prom and the finish – TICK !!!
I felt Ok for the first section, but knew that Flamborough to Bempton was hilly – and I was worried about the hills! A friend from one of the local running clubs was running with me and it was on this section we became aware of another runner who was stopping to walk all the time – he would run fairly fast, overtake us then stop and walk, we’d overtake him and then it would all repeat again. Of course we are all entitled to our own strategies, but I couldn’t help think that he would have been better to slow down his running sections and try and find more of a steady rhythm.
You can see my splits above. I found the last three miles very tough, if it hadn’t been for Tim encouraging me I’m not sure if I’d have managed to keep up the pace.
OFFICIAL CHIP TIME – 01:58:17 !!!!
YES, THAT IS A SUB 2 HOUR HALF MARATHON!!
YES, I’M AMAZED !!
I’ll brush over the fact that despite only sipping at a drink and not eating I still ended up being sick a couple of hours after the race – although once I’d got over it I just wanted to eat everything in sight! Takeway and prosecco were the way to celebrate in the evening 🙂 (if anyone has any suggestions regarding the sickness – please share!).
Today – knees are a bit sore, thighs a bit achy, but overall not too bad at all. I’ll leave it to another day to share my thoughts on where to go from here.
a mile run 