Milton Keynes Half Marathon

Way back in 2006, it was at the MIlton Keynes Half that I first managed to break 90 minutes for the half marathon distance. Yesterday was three years down the line though and things have moved on a bit. I had set myself an ambitious target of 1:20:30 which was perhaps slightly out of reach, but you never know, the right weather etc and it could have been possible. When I woke up yesterday I had a sneaky suspicion that the 80 minute run was not on though as I could hear the wind from inside the house. I just hoped it would die down a bit before we started.

We finally made it to the start line with about one minute to spare thanks to a massive tailback and a little detour to get to the start line - perhaps not the best prep, but the run from the car to the line was at least something. We set off and I instantly thought to myself that I was actually feeling quite good, I still have a bit of a cough, but I was able to manage that okay. I missed the first couple of mile boards and then saw the first 5k board and realised that I must be a bit up on schedule as I went through that in 17:30 - woops. I kind of knew now that I had started a bit hard and that I would just need to try and slow down a bit, get into a good rhythm and see how things went. My pace was good though, going through the 4, 5 and 6 mile markers ahead of schedule and then going through 10k in 36:45 and I was through half way in 39:00....there was no way I was going to be doing a 1:18 though!

It was about at 8 miles though that things started to go wrong. I think that either my running shoes are worn out or the socks I had on were not the best, but at this point, my feet were getting so painful as I could feel a blister starting to form. The pain got too much though and I definitely started to slow down, I even thought about just jogging round the rest as I just could not really land on the ball of my foot. At mile 9 I stopped and decided to just take the socks off and see if this made any difference. It still hurt, but it was certainly better. The only problem now was that we were now on a very exposed piece of road and it would be hard to describe just how hard it was running into the gusting wind. It was like running in water it was so hard to move forward. My mile splits for the 3 miles or so that were in to the wind were about 30 seconds slower than they had been and they finally meant, along with the sock removal, that I was now behind schedule.







I ploughed on though and eventually regained some speed in the last mile or so and managed to put in some 6:20'ish miles to eventually bring me home in 1:22:32. Not that bad I suppose but i am slightly annoyed with the shoe incident...it would have been a much better indicator of my fitness if I had been able to run properly all the way. Still, I shouldn't complain, doing a 1:21:45 (my Garmin time which removed the sock change) when I am not doing anywhere near as much running as last year is not that bad I suppose. I had also been out on the bike on Saturday and done a 1:08 for 25 miles which included a fair bit of stopping and starting round Regent's Park with what seemed like a constant headwind.

Next weekend the real racing starts when I have a two up team time trial where me and my mate are going to be tearing round Henley on our TT bikes - I just can't wait.