Diary of an Athletic Nobody – You're in the colony of slippermen

….there’s no who, why, what or when…

For the Great North West Marathon on Sunday and I decided to ease up on the miles in preparation. I still done my track session on Tuesday but I’d had a good solid four weeks of 75+ miles behind me leading up to this race so decided to ease off miles wise, not doing running anything more than 7 miles and no double sessions.

The course itself is flat as the proverbial, the only snag would be if the wind kicked up, which being Blackpool in February was a distinct possibility. I arrived with plenty of time to spare and decided to have a long slow warm up. It was cold on the front with the majority of the wind coming from the South. The course itself was all on the sea front, starting off by heading North, we’d go around 4 miles on the top path then down heading South up to the 7 mile mark, then a loop again North up to 10 and a bit miles and the final 3 miles back South.

My game plan was to start with 6 minute miles and hang on as far as could. As I started out I felt okay and stepped up the pace slightly to 5:57 which all being well would take me under 78 mins – possible but not probable but I thought I’d give it a whirl. The 1st 4 miles went fine but as I turned going back South I found the going tough. It didn’t seem too windy but once I got off the front and headed back North I picked up the pace again. I think the ground was slightly heading uphill from South hence the big difference in splits. Another issue I had was the company, or lack there of! From about mile 3 there was group of four I was running with and this quickly dwindled to a group of me at 5 miles. One guy was within touching distance and as I picked the pace back up, I went through 10 miles in 1 hour 4 seconds and was feeling good and very confident of a PB.

As we turned for the home stretch the runner from Lytham seemed to find an extra gear and as the yards passed he was getting further away. I was slowing too, a group of three lads cruised past me, I briefly clung on but they dropped me with about 2k left.

The PB was looking a hard sell and as we neared the finish the course rose up a 100 metre stretch that took any energy I had left in my legs out. I could see the finish and the clock which ticked over at 1:19:00 - to get under my 79:28 PB I’d have to sprint around 200m in 27 seconds! I had nothing to give and crossed the line in 79:50. Satisfied but I could have done better. You only had to look at the amount of PB’s for guys at the business end and beyond of the race to see the conditions were perfect.

Plusses from the run was it was my 2nd fastest half marathon, only my 2nd time under 1:20 and more importantly I was 2 minutes quicker than when I raced at Wrexham last year, at a similar stage of my Edinburgh marathon schedule. All in all a good work out that really filled me with confidence, roll on Trafford 10k and Wilmslow!