Exeter Half Marathon

I mentioned in my last post that I had suffered an injury, but the stretching and a couple of days off did the trick.  I also did all my runs at a very easy pace for two weeks, as I was gearing up for a race this morning which is my first "A-Race" of the year, and one I was hoping to do well in.

After the recent very bad weather, this morning was pretty much perfect running conditions.  The sun was out and there was no wind, so all was looking good for the race.  There was some frost on the ground in a couple of places on the lap, but by lap 2 of the 3 lap race that was pretty much gone.  So no real concerns there either.

I had planned to set off at 7:30 pace and I kept that in mind.  During the first 1/3 of the race I was purposefully holding myself back a bit but I went through in 33mins so I was more or less on target.  The second third was a bit tougher, but I was still on target for my sub-1:40, so all was looking good and at this point I was just trying to stay relaxed and concentrate.  It is fairly easy to lose concentration at this event as you find yourself in the middle of a line of runners and I find I end up running at their pace, even if it's a touch slow.  Anyway, I went through the second third of the race and I was feeling good.

The mile markers were slightly out which was worrying me a bit all the way around as it was quite tight in terms of my goal time and my watch has measured slightly over.  I did slow a bit in the last third which is frustrating, but I'm delighted to say I got around in 1:38:54 (this is my watch time so not official yet)!!  I'm really, really pleased as this is over 3-mins off of my previous PB!

The splits are 7:23, 7:26, 7:26, 7:24, 7:25, 7:24, 7:28, 7:28, 7:33, 7:34, 7:36, 7:41, 7:49 with the last bit of 1:18 (7:09 pace), so you can see I did slow which is annoying and shows I went off too quickly I suppose?  Interestingly though, according to my Garmin this works out at exactly 7:30min/mile, which was my initial target so I suppose it all came out in the wash in the end.  If you're interested, the Garmin trace is here, and you can see it's as flat as you can get.

This wasn't a Championship race so there weren't that many Trotters there (just 5 in total).  However, one "Trottette" did a massive PB by knocking 5 minutes off her time and went under 1:30, so she is delighted.  Well done her!

Not the best picture but this is me just before crossing the finish line.