Wilmslow Half Marathon
I was hoping for pb but ended up not even getting a sb at this years Wilmslow Half Marathon. It’s my third outing here and was more than confident of a. getting a pb and b. getting under 79 mins.
I headed up to Wilmslow with Tim F, James and Marty on what promised to be near perfect conditions. Getting out the car you could feel the heat already which was wasn’t a good sign as with the clocks going forward, it was only really 8 am.
Follpwing a stroll around and some toilet time we headed back to the car to get changed and have a warm up. For previous races I’ve pretty much gone in my race kit straight from the car to the surrounding roads near the start line but because we’d had a dawdle around, we had to fight our way through around 3000 runners who had already took up their place in the starting pens.
I managed to get to the front and moved into a side street doing a few shuttles. I could feel the heat there but didn’t let it worry me. I made sure I got as close to the front as possible, last year it took me a good mile or so to break away from the masses. The gun went we all set off, I had thought about tagging along to a few runners I knew would be around the 78:30 mark but decided to stick to my 5:57/6 mile pace.
The first few miles went great, I did try to push up to 5:57 but that wasn’t easy but oddly the 6’s felt fine, such a fine line! I hit the 10k spot on 6 m/mile pace and a few lads from Sale came bombing through. I tagged along with the them, one dropped off after a mile or so but the other lads was pushing on, weaving through the crowd.
I took one some water as the heat was getting to me and kinda lost a bit of rhythm for while. Around the 8 mile mark my pal from work Si Proud had informed his missus of a few of the lads doing the race – she was marshalling and had gone to the trouble of making a banner with my name on! Chuffed with that I starting concentrating on getting to the 10 mile as close to the hour as possible.
I went through the 10 mile mark at in 60:54 – nearly a minute off my target but I felt great. I started pushing as hard as I could and was suddenly weaving through the traffic. I passed Dave Watson from Preston who dragged my sorry tired ass through the last 5k here in 2010. I charged past him offering a role reversal but he stayed at his pace but encouraged me to keep going. I cranked out a 5:50 mile but lasted about another 200 yards before it felt like I was going backwards! D
ave soon caught me and I tried to stick with him but I wanted the race to end. I passed James from PLS who was suffering from tight calfs and tried to gee him along. I picked it up with about 800m to go but it hurt.
I knew I was well outside a PB and struggling to sneak a SB and get under 80 mins. The last 160 metres seemed to go on forever but I crossed the line eventually, 1 second slower than I was at Blackpool.
So, I was disappointed with the time but not the performance. I bumped into Stu Doyle who I run a lot with in work and he’d ran a brilliant 72:48 – he even wobbled in the last few miles with cramp so hats off in them conditions. Everyone else I spoke to was out on their 2011 times by anything from 30 seconds to 2 mins. All the PLS lads agreed the condition were really tough, Martin still ran a great time of 74:14 but even he said it was damage limitation near the end!
All in all it was a great day out and as usual a great race. I’m still super confident for a PB at London but hopefully the weather cools off on 22nd April.
PLS results from Wilmslow:
Wilmslow Half Marathon 25th March 2012
Martin Swensson 01:14:14
John Connolly 01:19:51
James McNally 01:23:04
Tim Fletcher 01:26:35
Stephen McNicholas 01:33:42
Marty Hirrell 01:35:16
Tim Warn 01:45:18
Althea Deane 02:12:32
London training week 12
MONDAY 6.5 miles 6.5
TUESDAY track session 5 mins at 5:35 then 5 x 2 mins at 5:20 twice - warm up/down 9.5
WEDNESDAY 10 miles sub 7's around Bate Mill 10
THURSDAY tempo run 4 miles 6:20, 6:15,6:10,5:45 - warm up down 6.5
FRIDAY xc slow 6.5
SATURDAY Park Run 1st birthday run slow 4
SUNDAY half marathon with warm up/down 15
Total 58 |