Bath Half Marathon 2013

For the seventh straight year, I ran the bath half marathon on 3rd March with my brother around the streets of Bath with thousands of other runners and the usual crowds of supporters. This year was a little different to last year though, with the temperature around 20 degrees lower.

Arriving in Bath to see my brothers family before the run, the outside temperature gauge read -1 degrees Celcius and I'm pretty sure the temperature did not come much above zero for the whole day. Given my decision to run again in my supergirl fancy dress outfit to embarrass my brother (as much as anything else), I at least had something to cover my arms, but my legs got pretty cold in the long wait at the start line for the gun to go off. My brother was feeling pretty confident this year about his training and so we went off at quite a pace and ended up doing the first few miles not far off 7m40s each. Despite a bit of a slow down in miles 9 and 10, we kept pretty much at this sort of pace throughout the race and it was brilliant to get my brother to a new PB of 1.43.29. I was finding it quite difficult to slow down in the last mile and despite high fiving most of the crowds in that last mile uphill I still ended up finishing 8 seconds ahead of him in 1.43.21.

The cold weather meant a decrease in the number of people cheering in the streets (compared to last year) but the fancy dress still meant that we got plenty of cheers for supergirl, superwoman, superman and superthingy as well as one cheer for batwoman ?!?

I've had a week to recover now and need to start thinking about my 10km ambitions for the year. I'll get posting soon.

It's over for 2012

Well, that's it. All of my twelve half marathons for 2012 are over and despite some setbacks during the year, I have completed one in every month without any serious injury and with a fitness level I never would have dreamed of at the beginning of the year.

Todays race was the inaugural AVR Wiltshire half marathon staged near Trowbridge in the UK. As it was my last race of the year, I was aiming to try to beat my PB from Cologne and so set off with a pace of 6.45 in mind.

My actual mile splits were:

6.41 6.52 6.47 6.46 6.43 6.45 7.00 6.44 7.18 6.52 6.55 6.52 6.41

You can probably see from the middle section that there were two nasty hills (see the route profile).

Up until the 10km marker I still felt as if I was on for a sub 1.29 PB but the two hills just knackered me and pulled me back further than it was possible to come back from.

It was also pretty windy with a wind speed of 17mph according to met office with 27mph gusts. That wasn't too bad in the early miles when I was running in a group and managing to draft others. However, when I went off by myself after about 4 miles it became much harder. One guy from Salisbury that I overtook at 5 miles then managed to catch me up on the second hill and although I tried to stay with him, he just had far too much energy and finished 40 seconds in front of me.

Overall, it was a great race and it made a good end to the weekend. On Saturday, I was coaching with the SW Junior orienteering squad as we had our Christmas weekend training on Salisbury Plain (although I wasn't doing much running!).

Anyway, I finished in 1h 29 minutes and 58 seconds. Not quite what I wanted, but if I'm honest, a pretty good finish to my challenge year. Even better, I finished the first 10km in 41m59s (a chip time - not estimated) which is the second fastest time I have ever raced.

Roll on my two Christmas races and I better decide what I'm going to do for 2013!

Remember, remember the 17th November

I really can't believe that it is already November and I have now completed eleven half marathons during the year. It seems a very long time ago since I was in Tromso and Spitzbergen in January.

For this race, a couple of my friends from the Portishead Running Club (PRC), Simon and Jon decided that they wanted to run as well, so the three of us left home at 8am for the 90 minute drive up to the Shakespeare Raceway near Stratford on Avon. The raceway is an old airfield constructed during the second world war and now used partly as a drag racing strip and also for gliding.

The organisation throughout was excellent, but I was really impressed when the race director personally took us to the finish so that we understood the last part of our route.

There are actually three races taking place at the same time, with a 5km, 10km and half marathon all starting at 11am. There were probably around 1000 starters, but it was impossible to assess who was running which distance (except for their number which is only on the front of their vests). Many runners hared off at top speed so I just started at the pace I decided before the race - between 4.10 and 4.15 per km. I decided to go with metric pace rather than imperial as I had found this quite effective in Cologne last month. Each lap was 5km going up and down each of the three tarmac runways and along the drag strip. One thing I did not like was the number of time we had to run around sharp corners (generally cones).

I quickly grouped with several other runners and we stayed together pretty much until the end of the race. I was pretty amazed when I managed to lap a couple of runners on my second lap around the course and by the third lap I was overtaking plenty of the 10km runners on their second lap. On my final lap, I started to lap some of the half marathon runners and also overtook one of the PRC older runners Richard as I was on the last part of my fourth lap.

At the 20km mark, the runners made a short 1100m there and back run to complete the half marathon. My completion time by my watch was 1h29m17s. Two seconds faster than Bristol but two seconds slower than Cologne.

I will have to analyse my lap times and see if it is possible to get a sub 1.29 time at the AVR half marathon in three weeks.

The website did give the following information for my 5km splits (as there was a mat we crossed each time).

5km - 21.05 @ 4.13/km
10km - 21.16 (42.21) @4.15/km
15km - 21.17 (63.38) @4.15/km
20km - 21.18 (84.56) @4.15/km
Finish - 4.20 (89.15) @3.57/km

All in all a fantastic day and my average time for each race has finally dropped below 1h33m per race.

Cologne and another PB (1h29m15s)

I must admit that this morning I was not expecting to be announcing a new PB after my injury last week and a lack of real training. However, it all seemed to come together during the run to make for almost a perfect race and a certain reality that sub 1.29 is really possible sometime soon.

The day began early with breakfast at 5.30 and a drive into Cologne to park near the Messe where the bag drop was. We were quite early and so had plenty of time to relax and prepare and, of course, to wait in the ubiquitous toilet queues. I was in the red starting box which was the first to start and I made my way into the middle of the box to avoid starting too quickly. I just wish that others would stay further back if they only want to start off at a jog! My friend was in the green box and took an unbelievable 38 minutes to cross the start line.

Most of the race was through the suburbs of Cologne with very few supporters, but in several places, there were huge crowds including the city Centre at Rudolf Platz and the cathedral (Cologne Dom). The final kilometre was across the Rhine bridge back to the Messe and finishing downhill.

So, how did I actually manage a PB only 2 weeks after Bristol. I certainly had not really intended to beat my previous time, although I was keen to beat 1.30 for the fourth time. Since it was a European half marathon, of course the course was marked with kilometres as opposed to miles and that meant I had to work out another strategy for keeping tabs on my pace apart from my watch. I now know very well that my Garmin watch (despite being excellent for training) can give dubious information in a race especially when running in a built up area. Cologne is pretty built up! So, I switched my watch over to metric units and worked out that keeping a pace of between 4.15-4.20 per km would keep me on schedule. I also decided that I would press my lap button as I reached each km marker and this proved invaluable in working out my real pace.

Here are my lap times:

(1) 4.15.6
(2) 4.15.6
(3) 4.15.6
(4) 4.15.6 (average over 4km as I did not press lap during this time)
(5) 4.12.5
(6) 4.12.6
(7) 4.09.8
(8) 4.15.9
(9) 4.08.7
(10) 4.15.2
(11) 4.15.2
(12) 4.16.9
(13) 4.12.9
(14) 4.12.9
(15) 4.16.6
(16) 4.14.7
(17) 4.16.7
(18) 4.16.0
(19) 4.12.6
(20) 4.15.7
(Finish) 1.29.15

I arrived in with a gun time of 1.29.59, which was a fantastic feeling as I finished the race.

After the race and meeting up with Katrin, we went back into the city to watch the leaders in the marathon finishing. It is amaxzing to see how fast the front runnbers can be running after a full 26 miles!

After leaving the finishing area, we went to a local pool/spa and I recovered with a swim and a sit in a hot tub which made for a relaxing and pleasant end to the day.

Bristol half marathon - home race advantage

The Bristol half was my first half marathon back in 2006 when I surprised myself with a 1h55m finish time after 12 weeks training from pretty much beginning. It is one of a few races that I have since completed every year (including the Bath half, and the runs on Boxing day and new years day). As such, it is a race favourite and always has plenty of support alongside the thousands of competitors.

This year, the Bristol race was scheduled a few weeks later than usual due to the barriers/toilets all being used for the Olympics earlier in the month (my thought anyway). This meant that the weather was a bit cooler than in previous races which was a pleasant surprise after last months awful race. We'd had some prediction of rain, but that held off for the day and I set out with my friend Simon at 7.15am to park up the car close to the race start. We met up with plenty of the other Portishead runners which I've missed in all of my other races and then made our way to the start for a 9.30am start.

I'd decided before the race that I would try to go out at 6.45 per mile and hope that I could keep it going for as long as possible. Well, the first seven miles were on a flat 'there and back' section along the Bristol Portway and I kept pretty much to schedule with miles at 6.48, 6.43, 6.43, 6.45, 6.41, 6.44 and 6.41. I even managed a 10km time (approx by my watch) of 41m52. The next section was over the Cumberland basin and back into the city itself where we ran past the Queens Square, Castle Green and Cabot Circus. I managed even to keep the pace steady with the following five miles at 6.46,6.45, 6.45, 6.40 and 6.48.

The last mile and a bit seemed to last a long while right through the centre of Bristol and back to the start/ finish area at @Bristol. My thirteenth mile was at 6.39 but I ended up with 0.29 of a mile after that at a rate of  6.11. The main problem with trying to run at a constant pace by your GPS watch, is that in built up areas like the centre of Bristol, it all goes a bit wrong and the last few miles must have been a bit in error to give the extra 0.19 miles on the total distance. Luckily, with a pace of 6.45, it still meant that I managed to thrash my previous PB.

Really looking forward to running in Cologne next month!