Vale of York Half Marathon

This was my first half marathon since Wilmslow 2015 where I ran 1:23 on the way to 2:57 at the short Manchester marathon the same year.

All I had this year to work from was the 3:12 ran in Manchester this year. I knew therefore that pace would be a factor having not done too much speed work.

What little speedwork I had done would surely not be enough to get close to 1:23. However, this is what I decided to push for in the early stages of this race.

By mile three it soon became obvious that running at 6:20/mile pace was not going to be possible for the duration. I slowed to a more realistic 6:30/mile and tried to settle into a ryhthm.

The course was exposed in places and a strong wind prevailed at one or two points on the outward stretch of the route. I overheard a marshall tell another runner that the route goes out for 5 miles, does a 3 mile loop round a village before returning back to the areodrome we started from.

I held the pace steady over the next few miles and tried to work off other runners who were coming back to me. One particular section I surged a little to catch a group in order to shelter from the wind. I soon realized they weren't going as fast as me so had to duck out from cover and push on to the next target up ahead.

I was joined briefly by another runner who seemed to be cruising along. He mentioned he had run a 10k the previous week but preferred this distance as it enabled him to relax and take in the scenary, nice if you can I suppose. I moved past him around 10 miles with the end in sight.

One more tiny climb over a road bridge and on towards the left turn taking us back towards the aerodrome. It was here that the wind really got into our faces and made it difficult to keep pushing hard.

I did feel tired at this point but not flat out. I felt the pace just fall a little and as the wind increased in the final 1/2 mile I didn't have the desire to bury myself.

This would prove the story of the race as the comfortable guy came last me in the last 200m I saw the clock ticking towards 1:26 and realised I had run a fairly mediocre race.

After a little while I decided the race wasn't a disaster and the workout proved I am not a million miles away from where I need to be. Ideally I would have run closer to 1:23 for confidence that the training was pointing towards a 3 hour marathon performance. However, the goal race is still 8 weeks away and as I step up the sessions I should have plenty of confidence boosting runs ahead of me.