Robin Hood Half Marathon

Everybody panic !

Hurricane 'Malcolm' or something is about to hit UK shores and we had been told for most of the week that this was going to land sometime Sunday/Monday. Image my surprise when I opened the curtains this morning to lovely blue skies with hardly a cloud in the sky ! Not too warm and I'd say ideal conditions for a nice 13 mile race.

I left sunny Lincoln at 7.45, and arrived dead early again in Nottingham 45 minutes later. This meant we had plenty of time to park the car away from the race centre and enjoyed a nice walk along the embankment to the race village. One there, I resisted buying yet another race day technical T-shirt (I clearly have too many !), and then failed miserably to bump into any fellow NetNutters ! - there was no tardis that I could see so I mingled around the Lucozade tent for a bit where I managed to get a pacing wristband which I think is brilliant. I opted for the sub 1.55 band, which having all the expected mile splits wriiten on it gave me something to focus on.

After a bit of a warm up I headed down to the start area, and into my allotted pen which looked to be getting a little congested the nearer to race time we got - some big hairy bloke came and stood practically on my toes for the final couple of minutes. At a little over 10.00 am though there was movement at the front and we started moving forwards - always a good sign that a race has started !

The race...

The start of larger races of this type are always congested for the first couple of miles and I am used to this.... but today it seemed stupidly so for the first kilometre along the embankment or so as the race had to sort itself out and those people that again started in the wrong pens had to be navigated. As a result I didn't get to settle down until we were near the one mile marker and a quick look at my watch and at the pace band told me I was about about ten seconds behind schedule already.

Having settled down though I found that even though it was busy, if I managed my lines correctly I could always find space and not get myself too boxed in. As a result I made up time in that second mile and edged in front of target. There was a lovely long climb in the city centre which strung the runners out a little before we headed out towards the Trent University campus for some scenic running around the park and around a lake. I felt the wind here for the first time as it had got up a little but was enjoying the surroundings a little too much to care !
Quite a bit of this section was familiar as it was partially the same course as the Jagermeister 10k from August so I knew that we were going to going up some climbs very shortly.

At mile 5 I was ahead of schedule by about 40 seconds or so, but then we had the climb into the Trent building which was again a long incline and I had to make further time up on the way down - I also overtook the bloke that I had been using for pacing at this point and had to search around for a while for another target - and finally found one in the shape of a young woman - a perv me...noooooo.... racing reasons only I swear guv'nor !

We made our way out to Wollaton Park, which seemed peppered with inclines and the worst of the days climbs but as long as I didn't overcook things going up, I found I could quickly get back on track when things levelled out on top and of couse enjoyed the declines where I was able to get a bit of respite. My pace had not dropped and I still had those 40 seconds in the bag as we passed mile 10 and made our way through the city towards the finish. With all the ups and downs mostly finished, things flattened out and the wind began to pick up again - I started to stiffen a little and my gel bottle now looked like warm milk as I finished that heading through the final water station. At mile 12, I tried to quicken but could not manage too much and found myself running next to a fellow triathlete ( yes there were at least two of us dressed like transvestites!) , and we spent the last mile grunting events we had completed to each other, before he completely did me in a kick for home. I managed to get over the line in 1.53 something which was a 21 minute personal best for me and then got a super medal ( I'm a bit of a medal tart TBH and although a tshirt is OK you can have too many! )

In all, a super day at the office, at a gem of a race, and I might even be back next year.

Lincoln Wellington 5k

Lincoln Wellington Athletic Club host a four race series of 5,000 metres over the summer months at Yarborough Leisure Centre. Having competed earlier in the year at a similar event in Chesterfield, I was pleasantly surprised by both the size of the event and the organisation behind it - and the best bit was that it was super cheap to enter - just a £5, bargain !

The race

I turned up very early again, but this time it was because I had been suffering from DOMS in my hamstring for the preceeding couple of days and wanted to make sure that I spent enough time warming up before the race - besides warm up was on the running track and it was a great running surface. I also met up with John from UK Netrunner, himself looking to break the 25 minute mark for the first time - you can follow Johns blog here :http://runner795.blogspot.com/

We lined up at half past seven and after a short race briefing we were set on our way. The course is made up of a short loop, followed by three larger loops, all run on the cycle track which follows the perimetre of the leisure centre grounds. The pace for the first lap was a bit quicker than I am used to as I found myself running with John ( the netrunner peleton! ) and I was struggling to keep with his faster pace. As we hit the first of the larger laps though I managed to settle down into it and found myself targeting one of the runners about twenty metres ahead of me.

She was still in my sights for most of the second lap, but towards the end , I managed to squeeze past on a corner just before I got lapped by the race leader. For the rest of the lap, I concentrated on not dropping my pace and getting re-taken.

On the final lap, I found the pace hard work, but decided to try and keep going as long as I could. For the final 400m I could hear someone beginning to catch me and it took all I could muster to finish just ahead in a near sprint finish.

23.37 then for the night, and a PB by nearly two minutes at this distance - a good evenings work.