New Years Day Half Marathon
Seeing as I did a Hilly Hogmanay Half Marathon last year I had decided to do something similar this year. We were away in St David’s though so I couldn’t do the same route, nor could I do it on New Years Eve so instead I did it first thing on New Years Day.
I was up early after not much sleep but couldn’t start my run for a couple of hours as it was still dark. I headed out at first light with a route in mind that took in some of the country lanes out to the east of St David’s. A Half marathon run is quite a long run for me so I started off at a steady pace and was just going to take it as it came to see what I could do and how my time compared to a similar run last year. I certainly wasn’t expecting an earth shattering performance as I haven’t been training properly lately and more to the point is the fact that I’m two stone overweight at the moment.
The first two miles clicked off at 7:54 minutes and 7:50 minutes so I started to decide to see if I could keep it under 8 minutes per mile. That would equate to around 1hr 45 for the Half Marathon which I was pretty sure was about the time I’d done last year.
It was a grey blustery day again and the worst of the headwinds would be on the way back towards the end of the run, so I would have to gain some time early on if I wanted to keep that pace up. The route I had picked was perfect, plenty of scenery to keep my mind off the miles and a few hills here and there to keep things varied. No traffic at all for the entire run and although grey and windy it wasn’t raining. I gained a bit of time on my 8 mins/mile target on the descent into Middle Mill, but descending hurts my shins so I had to take it fairly easy. I then lost that time again on the climb out of the valley anyway. Miles 8 and 9 were a little quicker than the rest but I slowed from there as the headwind kicked in, the fatigue increased and the hills took their toll too.
I made it though. The route was just the right length, 13.4 miles in total and I completed it in 1:46:34. The half marathon distance was clocked off in 1:44:06 which was just under 2 minutes faster than last year. Not bad considering the fact that I’m so fat at the moment and there was an extra 200 feet of climbing on todays route. My average pace was 7:57 mins/mile so I just managed to stay within my goal of 8 mins/mile.
Time now to get back into athlete mode, start eating healthier, sort out a proper training plan and stick to it and lose some weight ready for a season of races in 2015. Trouble is there are still far too many tasty looking treats in the house, some of which haven’t even been started. I shall have to resist temptation or at least only eat small portions of them once a day as a treat I think.
I don’t think a 2.5 hour drive home was really ideal recovery from the run though. I could barely get out of the car as I pulled up outside the house and walking to the front door on seized legs was fairly comical. Some light movement to ease the aching muscles would have been more appropriate.
