Bath Half Marathon

It had been some five months since my last half marathon, so I figured I would be in good shape for a PB in Bath. Recent events seemed to suggest the same. Although my pace had dropped off against headwinds at the Llanelli 10, I had still managed to average 6:37/mile. If I could grit my teeth and average the same pace here, I would come home in under 1:27 and knock over 2 minutes off my existing PB. I felt pretty good, so I saw no reason why not.

I was in the white wave, which (if memory serves) was the quickest pen after the elites, though there were some suspect looking runners in there -- I don't think it was particularly well policed. When the buzzer sounded, I eased away at what felt like a pretty comfortable pace. After a mile or so I saw Annie with her auntie and uncle and gave her a high five.

We headed into the first of two circuits and up a reasonable incline for perhaps half a mile. The weather was warming up, so I tried to take on fluids whenever the opportunity arose. I was running remarkably consistently -- 6:38, 6:41, 6:40, 6:40, 6:46 -- but I started to notice the mile markers creep ahead of my Garmin splits. I clocked 10km in 41:30, but didn't see a timing mat until about 30 seconds later. Perhaps I was looking for excuses, because pretty soon afterwards I started to find things tough.

I kept my pace below 6:45/mile for the first 7 miles but at that point my legs started to feel heavy. I couldn't put my finger on why. The temperature? Well, it was warm but not sweltering. I think what was more likely was that I hadn't given my legs enough time to freshen up after a couple of pretty hard mid-week sessions. On Wednesday I had run a 5-miler at 6:30/mile and then on Thursday a 7-miler at 7:00/mile. Either way, my hopes of a PB started to slip away.

My split times hovered between 6:50 and 7:00 and by mile 13 I remember feeling pretty exhausted. You know when there's only a mile to go but a mile feels like forever? That pretty much summed it up. I managed something of a spurt in the finishing strait (I maintain that you can always manage a sprint finish, no matter how dreadful you feel...) and crossed the line in 1:29:47 -- 14 seconds outside my previous best. D'oh!

Just time for one last excuse: the course came up a couple of hundred yards long on my Garmin, according to which I was actually on for a PB by about 30 seconds. Garmins aren't always 100% accurate, but when I spoke to other runners they said the same. Oh well. I figured I had done pretty well to hold on for the last couple of miles when every sinew of my body wanted to stop. That PB would just have to wait for another day!