Today I ran my first 'official' half marathon. Despite having run the exact route last weekend, I still had a sleepless night and ended up feeling really nervous! I met up with the rest of the Beginners2Runners crew who had entered, and also with Sarah Burden who I ran the Great South with and who is also training for the London Marathon for Prostate UK.
It was great to be our running with lots of people we knew, and the race conditions were pretty good - cool, breezy (OK sometimes too windy but better than being warm!) and a bit of steady drizzle to cool us all off. The whole route is very rural as we found last week, but there were water stations and a few hardy residents/ spectators with tubs of jelly babies to hand out! The base was at the primary school so there were also plenty of decent facilities; bag drop, refreshments and the all important loos!
It went well - Sarah and I ran together all the way, and we saw my other B2R friends off and on throughout. We also had some extra encouragement from Dean who tweaked his cycle training route so that he could ride down and cycle alongside for a chat and general coaxing along, which was lovely! I took a few minutes off my time from last week, and Sarah beat her previous half PB by almost 10 minutes which is amazing!
We still have a way to go before the marathon, but each of us has a motivation, and being able to enter local races and train together gives us a chance to say 'Yeah it IS a long way... Yeah today was bloody hard work..... but WE CAN DO IT!!!!!' And we WILL do it, for these superb charities:
Emma: Children with Cancer UK: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/EmmaAldrich
Sarah: Prostate Cancer UK: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/sarah-jane-burden1
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| Beginners2Runners |
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| Sarah and me |
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Yes we were knackered, but seeing your mate crouched in the hedge waiting to take a photo makes you smile
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| Sprint-Finish Sarah |
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| One...more....step..... |
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| Yvette, Danny and Carolyn, fellow Early Birds |
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| Nick and Danny |
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| WE DID IT! |
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| Chip times |
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| I'll go with my Garmin time I think! |
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| Gotta love some runners bling! |
And as always, my lovely husband arrived home from damp rugby training and set about cooking a much needed very tasty Sunday roast!
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| Inhaled it in about 3 minutes flat |
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