Running Royalty delivered, plus considering the Bideford Half

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been in touch with Amby Burfoot about getting a signed copy of his book.  We exchanged a couple of emails, and he posted the book out to me and it arrived yesterday, with the below message.

I must say, I'm really gobsmacked by this as Amby Burfoot did all the correspondence and posted the book out himself (his signature was on the postage label).

The book arriving put a little spring in my step on yesterday's run.  I did just over 8 miles in target half-marathon pace and felt good.  I purposefully "held back" a little bit at the start and finished the run strongly which is what I am really hoping to do at Bideford.  The splits were:

1  8:10.7
2  7:50.7
3  7:49.4
4  8:06.2
5  7:56.6
6  7:56.8
7  7:51.5
8  7:44.8

I've been trying to find a reliable profile of the Bideford Half Marathon course that I'm running this weekend, but I've been struggling a little bit.  I haven't noticed this before, but I've found a few courses on the Garmin Connect site of last year's race; however, the profiles seem to vary quite wildly for the same course.  It seems the profile feature on some watches isn't that accurate; certainly the second diagram can't be correct unless the person was swimming the course and then climbed out on the 10-mile mark!

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/154859150

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/154828856

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/154918112

Diagrams 1 and 3 do seem fairly similar, with Diagram 1 being a "smoother" profile, which is similar to the profiles that get generated from my own watch, whereas Diagram 3 seems more "jagged".  I wonder if the differences are to do with how often the different watches measure the elevation?  There are still some differences though, particularly around mile 7 where diagram 3 shows a steep decline and the incline at mile 9 on Diagram 3 seems a lot steeper.

Broadly, it looks like I'll be keeping the below in mind:

- take it easy until about mile 2.8.

- there is a hill at around 2.8-3.2 mile, with the corresponding descent from 3.4-3.8 mile

- from about 4 mile to mile 10 it is fairly flat, with a hill at 6.2 miles.

- there is a descent from mile 10 to 11

- it is fairly flat (but tending to an incline) from 11 to the finish, with a small hill at about 12.2 and 12.4 miles.

I got an email from the Bideford Half organisers...apparently, there are 34 Teignbridge Trotters that are currently in the race!