So did you hear the one about the Cardiff half-marathon? It turned out that it wasn’t a half-marathon.
I’d entered as it was a nearby race of the right distance, but balked a little at the entry cost. Boys & girls from the club would be running & watching though, & I never get to see enough of those guys so I thought that was worth the entry fee. I had an inkling that the course might be quite nice too & would be a good post-season test for my run fitness. I thought it would be fun to have another run with James Nunn after our close finish (7 seconds I think) in the Tewkesbury half-marathon.
I got there nice & early with the family to avoid any potential traffic issues with possibly 15,000 people turning up to run & we had a nice walk down to the start in the bay in the cold, sunny morning. The kids had quite enjoyed the drive across from Swansea, watching the sun come up. Kitted up, warm up, pee, gel & found Nunney outside the barriers near the front of the race. After some pre-race boisterousness we clambered over together & jostled into position near the front of the queuing runners. We needn’t have hurried as the starter’s preamble took a while & we went past the 9am start time. I was looking out for a colleague, Anne-Marie, but was surprised I couldn’t see her (she’s taller than me). It turns out she had nipped into the elite’s starting space ahead of us, which is fair enough as she finished 3rd here last year!
Eventually the hooter hooted & we charged off. One of my aims was to work on my first mile race pacing & I was aiming for a steady 6:10min/mile pace with the thought that I might actually run a 6min/mile. Adrenaline is a funny thing. Another aim was to run straight 6’s (i.e. 13.1miles at 6min/mile pace to finish in 1:18:30ish) so this all fitted together nicely. It turned out to be a 5:50minute first mile, but the effort level felt good and easy so I decided to stick with it. Subsequent miles also hit 5:50 so I was doing ok. I had lost sight of James & it turned out to be a good thing that I hadn’t planned to run on his shoulder as he belted out a first mile so fast that he put himself in the first 15, Kenyans and all. (He spent the rest of the race working his way backwards but still beat me easily with a great time & effort by him).
The usual bunches formed & mildly pee’d me off so I found some space to run alone. There was no wind, lots of sun and the temperature was perfect. The route through the city & the park was pretty nice & as I have cycled most of it an awful lot (it used to be part of a commute route) I was aware of the slight inclines and potentially slower miles, so helping my pacing.
There were lots of shouts from faces I hadn’t seen in a while too. Lovely. I felt quite popular.
By mile 7 it was getting hard. Missed training from a mildly torn calf the other week was starting to show itself, and no amount of mental trickery would get my pace back up to 5:50min/mi consistently. Hold on for 7 through 10 then run the 5k hard to the end. Really, the only slow mile I had was when I took a feed station a little slow for a gel & a good few swigs and that was a smidgeon over 6min/mi pace, but the seconds were adding up. Anne-Marie had found me, overtaken me, and left me standing. She got a lot of S4C time too. I’ve no idea what they were saying though as I couldn’t find the subtitles button.
Into the bay and there was more than the suggestion of a breeze in our faces as we headed east towards and over the barrage. A short, steep, fast decline & incline had lit warning lights for my failing right hip flexors & abductors. A focus on good running form was pretending they were fine but with that plus breeze my miles were creeping above 6min/mile. Oh well. The maths suggested I had done enough for a 1:17 overall time that would be a PB of some minutes and respect and would have me jumping for joy if I could jump at the end. I focussed on chasing down lone runners and picked them off painfully, one by one.
The buildings of the bay were a welcome sight but the view of the huge loop up the wide road and back was not. I passed the finish as the 3rd lady was finishing, I think the announcer said, but I still had some way to run up to the turnaround point. Once around and facing the finishing straight I had a profound mental change of perceived effort and pushed hard enough to drop the Les Croupier runner beside me. It was a potential lesson in central governor running fatigue theory, and I thought I’d already overcome that.
1:16? Seriously? I was very chuffed with that time for a half marathon. Of course, it turned out that we’d not quite run a half marathon as some doofus had rearranged the course to avoid an obstacle to reduce it’s length by 193m. That must have been some obstacle.
I wasn’t disappointed. My racing season ended in September and I was just mucking around for the love of running. The maths say I would have run a 1:17 so I’m v impressed with my spindly legs. They’ll go even faster next year. But maybe not at the Cardiff nearly-half-marathon 2011.
We spent the rest of the day seeing club-mates, mooching round shops and recovering from the heart attack induced by the cost of parking in Cardiff city centre. Immediately after the race my nose & head felt awful, like someone had rammed ice cubes into my sinuses. I guess that’s a side effect of breathing in huge volumes of very cold air for over an hour. My legs felt ok (relatively) and recovered very quickly in following days, but the rest of me felt terrible. It may have been a rather stressful race as I was ill for the following week. Maybe I’m a little out of shape and overdone. Time for a rest.