Ran the Watford Half Marathon today. It was great to do the first race of the year, really got me into the spirit of the season. It was well organised and plenty of people training for their spring marathons, plus a few people from Tri-Force doing it. I lift-shared with Matt and we got there in plenty of time really to drop out bags. It was a cold morning - very nice for running, but freezing standing around waiting to start! But everything started on time and it was only a short walk to the start so no hanging around! I felt pretty good, haven eaten well the night before and got plenty of sleep. I'd had quite a busy week leading up to it, but had 3 quite easy days for was nicely rested for it.
I had planned on going for a reasonable time for this one, probably not a PB as I had heard it was quite hilly, plus it was my first HM (that I'd raced) of the year. Maybe around 2:15. So really I just wanted to go out and see how I did. Unfortunately, I made the mistakes of a) going out to fast and b) not being prepared for the hills. I got a bit over excited at the start and went off at what I thought was a nice, steady pace, but ended up running the first two miles in under 10 minutes each (PB is 10:05 average). Of course at the time I felt fine, and thought if I kept this up I'd do really well, but no - I paid for this later! Sometime about mile 2, I found the 2:14 pacer and ran with him for a while along with a few others. So far so good. But then the first major hill at mile 5. Seriously I had underestimated these hills. Having gone out too fast i struggled with them, had to walk parts of them, and lost the pacer at about the half way point. My time was now well off my target sadly, I had no steady pace and I just wanted to get the hills over and done with and get to the finish. The final 3 miles were much nicer, fairly flat, and I finally got into a steady pace after all that time, plus we were back into the town and there was more crowd support. Ran a reasonable last 3 miles but it didn't make up for the time lost between miles 5-10. Fun finish though, the crowds were good and it felt good to have just survived that one!!
Ended up with a time of 2:21 which was a little disappointing but I am not going to dwell on it. I just want to learn from my mistake of going out too quickly and look forward to the next HM, which is Brighton in 2 weeks' time. Besides, my main target it doing well in the London Marathon in April, so I suppose you could say i lost this battle but still intend to win the war.
I will still wear the Watford HM finisher's tee-shirt with pride though!
Congrats to Matt and Seth, plus those from Tri-Force who got PBs!!!
Link to the course on Map My Run
Total training
13.1 Watford Half marathon
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