Race day

After a very pleasant evening talking to the other residents of chez WIP, spent a fairly restless night (Paseo Sant Joan is pretty noisy at night even if we do have a view of the Sagrada Familia) before missing my first alarm (earplugs do have that problem) and getting up on the second alarm at 0610. After a great breakfast of muesli and orange juice and keeping topped up with water I sat in the living room for a while reading as surprisingly everyone was still asleep. Well not everyone, as the US guys were jetlagged and one was up and about and we had a general chit-chat about the race, running and keeping chickens!

At 0740, I made my way down to the start at the Arc de Triomf and sat in the mandatory 15 -minute queue for the toilets (which unsurprisingly were in high demand given the 12000 runners). Unfortunately, in the queue I put my Powerade bottle in the bag and only realised I had a problem when I felt the swishing of liquid at the bottom of the bag. Luckily there was nothing damaged or soaked, but it just meant that everything was now sticky or wet.

I probably arrived at the start a bit too late and was presented with a problem of how to actually get into the running pens which had a 5 foot barrier all around. Many people were climbing in with help, but I managed with a little help to get underneath the barrier to be greeted (amazingly small world and completely by chance) by another Portishead Running Club runner (Peter Wallace). I was quite a long way back in the runners but felt that this was probably wise as I did not want to do what I did last year in Stroud when I went off way too quickly and fell apart after mile 8.

Suddenly, without hearing anything, I realised that the race had started as people were starting to edge forward towards the start line. I crossed the line and went out at a great pace and ended the first mile in around 7.07. We followed up Parellel and onto Gran Via at which point I realised that my watch was having real problems coping with the GPS signal in between the high apartments on the streets. I started to keep more of an eye on the km markers and tried to work out how long it should take to reach each one.

I reached 10km in around 43.55 and realised I was probably behind schedule so tried to speed up a bit. But the pace given on my watch was now of no help and I had to trust to the markers and my rough calculations. When we reached the last couple of miles we were now in the open and I started to trust my pace again and realised I could still maintain sub 7 min miling. I was pretty pleased and just kept hoping for my sub 1.32 planned time. In the end I crossed the line and saw that my watch showed 1.31.41 (1.31.42 official time). I must have certainly done a negative split.

Map of the course from registration area

The race course itself was great. Really flat with a few slight undulations. The marshalling and road closures made the whole race a real pleasure. With Water, Powerade, bananas and satumas at the finish as well as a tech Tshirt picked up yesterday, this is really good value for money. A good lesson to plenty of the bigger UK based half marathons on how to do it.


After changing and waiting (unsuccessfully) for a friend from GSMA who was also running I went back to the apartment and drank loads of water and coffee as well as having a lunch of great bread and cheese.

I've just had a lovely restful afternoon and will be meeting a few friends at a party at Incognito this evening to catch up on carb intake (or to drink a few beers)