Two minutes less...

Like a complete idiot I ran the Reading Half again yesterday. as you may remember last year I just missed my target time of 1 hour 30, by a measley 12 seconds. I know it doesn't sound like much, but there is a big mental thing about the 90 minute barrier on half-marathons

...its the magic time that separates a great run from a good one. As such I really did have to do it all over again.

I screwed up last year due to a number of things. I hadn't done enough distance training, I didn't really have any concept of how to pace myself, and I'd quite stupidly changed the brand of shoe I wore, leading to some really quite spectacular blisters. The training for this year was very different. For a start, I did a number of races throughout the winter (the O2O in September, Hellrunner in November, Grim in December, and Wokingham Half in February). From this I've picked up a bit of race savvy. I backed this up by training with a Heart Rate Monitor, so I could see how I was actually performing, against how I felt...it sounds a bit daft, but I find it helps me to rationalise why I may be feeling overly drained as I run, and also justify to myself pulling back on speed slightly in order to conserve energy. Finally, I was training with other people (last year I trained alone), and that really helped me to get out over winter, and do the longer runs that were needed.

I did the Wokingham Half in 1 hour 30 and a few seconds, however I went off way, way too fast, going through 6 miles in about 37 minutes, and probably doing a personal best on the 10K distance. It was a warning that I needed to be very careful early on. The Wokingham course is mentally quite tough, as there are some inordinately long, straight roads, and when you're tired the worst thing you can see is a thin stretch of tarmac vanishing off into the distance. It was a good long practice run, but not suited to my mentality at all.

The Reading Half-Marathon is a much bigger event (16,000 entrants, compared to about 2,500 for Wokingham). I had quite cheekily signed up for the elite runner section (by handing in an estimated finish time of 1 hour 25). This was to make sure that I was given a good starting position, and wouldn't have to waste time and energy getting clear space. My plan was fairly simple...within the first mile I had to get some road space, and then get settled into a sensible sub-7 minute mile pace (for reference, to finish sub 1 hour 30, you need to run each mile in 6 minutes 52 seconds). As it happened I got a decent bit of space within a few hundred metres, and then concentrated on keeping my heart hate between 180 and 185...

...so I was quite chuffed when I went past the 5 mile mark (and Byrnies house) in just over 32 minutes, meaning I had about two and a half minutes in the bank. I made a concious decision just after that to slow my pace down, and to keep my heart rate closer to 180. after Russell Street (the hill coming out of town back upto Tilehurst Road), I gave another push, then again at 10 miles (as you hit the A33) I pulled back the pace, to save energy for Green Park, where I lost all my time last year.

I wasn't feeling great coming upto Green Park, and managed to convince myself I was behind time (basically I was running through a mile mark, and then a couple of minutes later trying to work out how long I had left, basing it on the mile marker I had left behind). As a result I really wasn't sure I was going to do it until I got into the Stadium, and saw my watch tick over onto 1 hour 28 minutes.

So, my Chip time (line to line) is officially 1 hour, 28 minutes and 14 seconds, and a gun time of 1 hour, 28 minutes and 31 seconds, so I'm officially a sub-1.30 runner, and I'm going to have the certificate to prove it. I also just scraped into the top 500 finishers (497th!), which was my other, slightly more transient target...

Huge thanks to Byrnie and Will for making the trek upto the stadium to cheer me in (and also the photo). Also, while they'll probably never read this, huge thanks to Kveta (1 hour 33 minutes, a PB by 4 minutes), my running coach, for dragging me out over winter to do the miles, and Benjie (1 hour 35 minutes...had a 'mare of a start, then pushed to regain the time, only to run out of energy on the A33), for giving me the competition I needed to drive myself forward and push.

So whats next? Well, for the next year I'm going to be concentrating on 10K runs. I have some scheduled already (first one is in April, over in Windsor). My initial target is sub 38 minutes, though I may tweak that based on my first couple of outings.

The link to the Picasa Gallery is Here.