Race report: Wimbledon Half

tldr; I raced the Wimbledon Half yesterday and it was absolutely fantastic! 

Looking back at the Hitchin Hard Half as a data point post-surgery, I targeted beating the time from that race (02:18:xx official race time, but I stopped to help someone and had to run back to the marshals down the hill to get official help, and my watch said moving time of 02:15:xx, so I'm taking that).  It was very much achievable goal given the relative lack of hills at Wimbledon - the Hitchin route has 676ft total ascent and the Wimbledon one only 480ft of total ascent.

You can see where I stopped to re-pin my number near the start

The goal was to manage a faster average pace than 10:18/mile to beat that time of 02:15.  The slight fun was that the first mile of the route is mostly uphill, so the first mile was always going to be slow as well as wanting to take it relatively gently for the first 20 mins or so. 

The race was due to be started in waves separated by 3 minutes, the first of which for those expecting a race time of 01:40 or less.  The following waves for 01:50 or less, 2 hours or less, 02:10 or less and then over 02:10.  I decided to go in the last wave, mainly because people frequently over-estimate how quickly they will finish plus go off too quickly at the start so even with slower runners I'd have plenty of room at the start with people disappearing off ahead of me who I'd eventually overtake and beat in the end.

We jogged across the common from the Windmill car park to the race start/finish on the rugby fields and as we arrived and registered it started to drizzle.  So we sheltered under the trees and drank tea while we waited the 45 mins or so to the first wave start.  MrTOTKat  had decided to go in the 01:50 or less wave so I'd be starting well after him and unlikely to see him again until the finish, given the route of the course.  I hung back and decided to go for a final wee after the 2 hour wave had started only to hear that the final two waves were being merged due to them being so small.  So I had to yank up my shorts pretty swiftly and trot swiftly to the starting arch to get going.

Given the uphill in the first mile, I wasn't too annoyed to see a 10:33 first mile given that I'd hiked a bit up that hill already to keep my heart rate down and save running effort for when I could do it faster than I hike uphill.  There was also the few seconds I had to stop to re-pin my race number, having yanked it off with the thumb of one hand while over-enthusiastically swinging up arms up that hill.

Then I managed to keep a relative lid on things for the first 5 miles.  The rain fell harder and harder and I was loving the route and the weather and feeling great, so I decided to wind it up a bit and carry on picking people off to overtake.  Having started in the last wave I ended up making well over 100 places by always targeting the next 2 people in front of me and reeling them in.  Hiking the steeper ups (a couple of smallish hills), taking the flats with a bit of push and enjoying the downs I made sure I kept pushing a bit all the way around the two laps.  Mainly not looking at my watch at all until after half way, I ran on feel and my legs felt like they wanted to have a go.

The end of the first lap had a good 1.5 miles of full-on downhill which I bombed down the first time, hitting my fastest ever mile since coming back from surgery.  Having practiced downhill a bit more than it appears a lot of people do, I flew past quite a few people on that first go down that hill.  After that I kept pushing all the way; targeting the next person to reel in and overtake over and over again.

I unexpectedly saw MrTOTKat  at mile 7-ish and waved - he was looking perky and I was slightly jealous that he had only 4 miles to go where the two bits of route touch each other and I still had 6 to go.  Things got a bit tough in miles 9 and 10 and I slowed a bit around there as I fought with myself to carry on pushing.  By that point I knew I'd be easily beating my 02:15 target as I'd taken a look at my watch and seen the average pace showing as 09:45/mile.   But I zipped up the Yuki suit and got on with it, finding the love again quite quickly by mashing through the puddles that others were mincing around trying to keep their feet dry (pointless as there were unavoidable puddles later in the lap) and then thinking about that gorgeous downhill in the last couple of miles.

Mis-judging the last little bit of the race, partly because I hadn't noticed a landmark right near the start of the route, it was a few hundred metres further to go than expected when MrTOTKat (having already finished and come to the final water station to cheer me in) yelled encouragement that it was "4-5 mins to go!" - I was expecting 2-3mins at that point and the extra made quite a bit of mental difference.

Battling it out with a couple of other ladies around the final couple of bends, they were more timid about the surface and weather than I was, but then I almost killed myself on a slippery tree root when I saw the giant Womble cheering people at the final water station. Then just before the end, I had a tiny little blow-up; my legs decided they weren't playing any more and I even had to walk a few steps to avoid throwing up.  Zipping up that Yuki suit again, I forced past it to run some more for the final 200m and had the only person to overtake me for the whole race go past at that point! Argh!  Throwing myself headlong across the field towards the finish I did manage something of a sprint at the end, but nothing sustainable and really had to have a sit down pretty soon after crossing the line.

It was great that the rain started just before the race and then only got harder all the way through until it stopped about 10 mins before I finished.  I love running in the rain and I'm totally happy to run through mud and puddles.  Overall I'm very pleased with how the morning's running went.  Having targeted 10:18/mile average as a target to beat 02:15 overall, and achieved 09:41/mile I'm really very happy with that - OK it was not quite as hilly as Hitchin, but that's still quite a difference (I officially finished in 02:06:44).  I'm very happy that I managed to keep pushing the whole way round - something I've had inconsistent results with in the past (the main reason I don't get on with multi-lap courses - it's too easy for me to give up at the end of any given lap :o)) - I could easily have thrown in the towel after one lap and just been annoyed with myself later (I'm pretty sure the lovely route plus positive mind-set I set off with rather helped this time).  What you have to bear in mind is that 5 months ago I was re-learning to walk after ankle surgery, and I've only been back exercising again for 4 months since 4 months off!  (And I'm not a lifetime athlete, so I don't have years of fitness in my body.)

What's also awesome is that this race looks like it's run 4-5 times in the year from March to October so it could be a local fun series for future years too!

Race report: Wales Marathon 2014 - What an awesome marathon!

The Wales Marathon - part of the Long Course Weekend, where there is a 2.4 miles swim on Friday, 112 mile bike ride on Saturday and a 26.2 mile run on Sunday.  Many people sign up for it as part of their training for Ironman Wales later in the year.  Many people say it's far harder to do those distances over 3 days than all in one.  I kinda agree.

However, I was "only" going to be doing the run on the Sunday as a part of my longer distance running training.  The plan was to run "comfortably" after the last few runs that haven't been so great, and hike hills if they were hard.

So that's what I set out to do.

We walked to the run start for the 10am start, expecting a mostly overcast, warmish day.  The sun blazed down on us in our vests and shorts and I thought; "OK, I'm gonna burn to a crisp!".  The gun went off and off we trundled over the line.  We decided to stay together through the twisty, narrow town section and then see what happened after that.  MrTOTKat was on a pacing strategy he was trying out for the Ironman later in the year; run 9 mins, walk 1 min.  I was on "run comfortably".  So we stayed together for a bit until I didn't want to walk when the beeps for MrTOTKat to start walking happened, and I pulled ahead.  As all the runners passed through the section of town near the station, we could smell some absolutely divine curry and there were plenty of comments about it amongst us.

I needed a wee from the first km.  Damn.  Thankfully in the 4th km there were public loos that loads of people were diving into, so I took advantage and was relieved to do so!  MrTOTKat had overtaken me in that time (11 seconds!) and it took me a good 2km to catch up with him again.  The terrain had been mentioned in the race briefing at the start and we were expecting quite some incline to get up to the Ridgeway... and there it came!  Time to power walk and fly past people who were walking normally up it :o)

Fun hill!

It was a good learning experience to power walk/hike up the steep hills as, though my heart rate stayed roughly the same as if I was running, it used different muscles and allowed for stretching out my calves and achilles which I think made a big difference later on in the race.

MrTOTKat and I saw each other a few more times during the race, I was surprised a couple of times as I thought I was pulling away more and more and in the end it turned out I was.

After the first hour of running I really felt great.  I started to run up inclines I'd normally use as an excuse to walk, and it felt easy.  It felt awesome.  I was absolutely loving it!  And my heart rate was a lot better controlled than in Rotterdam, where it dropped off like a stone and I felt awful.  I got to about 16 miles in and thought that things were going nicely and if they still were at 20, I'd think about what to do at the finish in terms of meeting up with MrTOTKat.  He'd mentioned it might be nice to cross the line together and as our strategies and aims for the day were different, I thought it might not happen.  So, I decided that if he hadn't caught me again by 23 miles, I'd walk from there until he did, so we could cross the line together.  I'd've ticked the boxes I wanted to tick in terms of objectives by then, and had absolutely nothing to prove.  The hardest thing would be letting people I'd stormed past in the last few miles, just go past me as I sauntered.

I carried on trucking, running up hills and down them, passing lots of people; power walking up only two more hills and finally coming to a really really mean downhill section at around the 22 mile point where I heard a guy just ahead of me shouting "this is the 1 in 4 bit!".   At this point, that sort of downhill was pretty harsh on the knees and I found it a bit hard and a bit painful.

Nasty little descent!

Soon after that was the 23 mile marker where I said I'd start walking if MrTOTKat hadn't caught me by then.  And he hadn't.  So I sauntered really really gently.  In my head I was a bit worried that he might have blown up somewhere or got hurt (I'd heard two ambulances in the distance behind), so I wanted to give him as much time as possible.  I got loads of comments from people jogging past me "almost there love, keep going!".  Mentally, that's really heard to hear when you're feeling pretty fresh and perky and perfectly capable of overtaking them and running happily to the finish.  After a few minutes of walking, I came across a couple of marshalls at a corner sheltered from the breeze, so I decided to stop with them and wait where I shouldn't get too cold.

Pretty course profile - blimmin' lovely to run

Happily, I didn't have long to wait before the fluorescent orange vest of MrTOTKat hove into view and we trotted off together on his continuing run/walk strategy to the end.

As we crossed the roundabout at the bottom of the last hill into Tenby, we came across another chap who chatted with us a little and as we started running again at the top he happened to mention we were 5 minutes to the 5 hour time boundary, so we picked things up a bit.  The final little run into Tenby, we weren't sure we'd quite make the 5 hours, but then realised that we had time to cross the timing mat at the start so the time on the pace car wasn't quite right for us and we started to sprint through town, giggling like kids.  It was great fun!  We were loving it!  And as we hit the red carpet, MrTOTKat grabbed my hand and we ran hand-in-hand along the red carpet at full tilt and over the line - hard to do, but awesome fun!

We crossed the line in 04:59:49!  Not that it matters, but it was such great fun sprinting through town for the last few hundred meters.  The time was utterly immaterial to me due to the plan for the day and what I decided to do at 23 miles in.  I thoroughly enjoyed the course (despite it being 100% on road).  I thoroughly enjoyed the brilliant local support; as ever the people of Pembrokeshire are brilliant when it comes to supporting hundreds of amateur athletes they don't know from Adam!  I thoroughly enjoyed sticking to my plan, feeling awesome once I'd warmed up, drinking water when I felt thirsty, eating nothing until after the race, sprinting through town at the end, easily running up hills I'd normally use as an excuse to walk and crossing the line with my sweetie.  I also love that the pace was only a couple of seconds per mile slower than at the London Ultra in 2013 when I was fitter, running faster in general, 4kg lighter and better at sucking up pain, but hurt quite a bit towards the end of it compared with this race where I had no pain in my quads at all.

The pink highlighted section is the race itself on this graph.  The massive drop off in heart rate towards the end is the 23 mile point where I walked then stopped and waited, and you can see the lovely sprint finish to a peak of 180BPM at the end very clearly!