What a race in Worcester!

After my pessimistic blog post last night when I was certainly not sure that I would be running today, everything went brilliantly this morning. I was up at 6.30 am for a good breakfast and did some rolling on my foam roller. My hip still hurt, but when I tried jogging that was not a problem. It seems that only a twisting movement actually hurts. So, on that note, I packed up and after taking a couple of ibuprofen,  headed up the motorway to Worcester.

It was a long boring drive made better (hmmm) by the average speed restrictions at the Almondsbury interchange. When I arrived at the Worcester warriors stadium, I was a little annoyed to have to pay £3 for parking and did feel that that cost should have been at least incorporated in the race fee!

I was quite early and had plenty of time to use toilets and see the pitch before heading up the road and along the canal to the start line. It was very obvious that the first mile was pretty much straight up hill with about 30m climb in less than 600m. The race was delayed by 15 mind to allow late comers to make their way from the parking to the start line and at 9.45am we were off.

Close to the finish line

The race was very pretty with almost the whole route on small B roads through idyllic villages whose houses looked pretty expensive (the cars in the drive gave the game away as well). There were clear mile markers up to mile 5 and then they disappeared until mile 10 which was frustrating, but not too bad. My gps watch had decided that my distance was shorter than the mile markers, so it appeared that I was running slower than I actually was. But since my times were good from the start I was starting to feel that maybe I had gone out too quickly especially as I was overtaken quite frequently in the first few miles. The realization came at about mile 9 that I was doing OK as I started to pull back and overtake all those who had overtaken me!

Although I had a dull ache in my hamstring throughout the race, at no time did it get any worse and at the end I had no problem in recovering and driving back home. However, I was so exhausted that after eating some lunch I went to sleep for an hour and a half.

Overall the race was great. My watch says I did 1.32.07 but that is a gun time and I hope my chip time will get me down below 1.32 (it did - my actual gun time was 1.32.08 and chip time 1.32.00). It was the first Worcester half marathon and I hope that I will do it again sometime.

Four races down and eight to go.