I entered this race as I was considering doing the Manchester Marathon, I decided not to do this Marathon but not going to waste a race number. I have raced every weekend in 2015 (and on 2 weekends I have done 2 races).
Four DAC athletes did the race, myself, Janet, Marie-Louise and Irene. Janet gave me some SIS gels, I was quite unprepared for the race. Put them in my pocket and the fell out of a hole.
I had decided a week ago to run at 6:10 pace and see what happened. On Friday my new Garmin arrived, the Fenix 3. This was a very extravagant purchase, but I sold my old garmin for £70 and some debtors recently paid up. Full review to follow.
Woke up with a slight headache and drove us to Hull, did a short warm up of about a mile, not feeling 100% but lets face it, its rare that you are on the start line.
I was pleased to meet Daniel Chan on the start line of Barnsley AC, seriously good runner who went on to finish in second place.
I am not going to lie, it was tough all the way, I don’t make things easy for myself.
I went through 5 miles in just under 30 minutes, a PB and a minute quicker than planned.
I went through 10 miles in 59:55 according to the mile marker, a PB and about a minute and a half quicker than planned (note the garmin had 10 miles at 60:30).
I went through half marathon in 1:20:30. My half marathon PB currently stands at 1:23:48. Unfortunately I still had 7 miles to run.
I had already started to fade by this point, my mile splits were slowing to about 6:30 and for the last 5 miles I really struggled to maintain 7 minute miles. As people were passing me I could see how much better their running style was compared to knackered me, I made many attempts to pick up the pace but was unable to do so.
I went through 30k in 1:58:42, my current PB is about 2:07:00 (perhaps 4 years ago?).
I finished with a time of 2:07:40 (6:24 minute miles) which I was pleased with (20th place), and I have seen that my PB’s for 5, 10 mile and half marathon are ready to be taken. Well done to all the other runners!