Absolute disaster

Possibly my worst run EVER! It was an absolutely gorgeous day, not a cloud in the sky and as I left to catch the train at 0824, it was already quite hot! There were a few fellow runners on the train for the short journey and I also met up with a friend who was doing the run.

We got to the venue with just over an hour to go and just took it quiet easy. As the crowds increased, so too did the temperature - you can probably guess where this post is going :)

As we start off at 10am, I'm feeling good. Purposely I'm holding back, like I mention in my last post though not paying particular attention to my HR or Pace. I probably felt fine for the first two miles but I started to struggle after that. I struggled onto the first drink station at 3.5 miles and decide to walk through it. It wasn't easy to start up after that and I ended up into a run walk regime more or less from that point onwards! To be honest, I almost turned around at that point to make the event a 10km - perhaps my biggest mistake of the day.

One of the big selling points about the Wokingham Half is that it's one of the flattest races in the UK - I personally find that hard to believe. I guess what I consider as flat (i.e. living in Cambridge) and what people down here consider as flat are two totally different things. I honestly think that I didn't go down-hill at any point over the run - it was all a slight uphill climb off into the distance!

So to cut 7-8 painfully terrible miles short, I got picked up by the sweeper bus at the 11 mile mark. I turns out I was in the last position at that point, had started to cramp a bit, my runs consisting of (max) 1 min on \ 30 secs off. When the marshall asked me if I wanted to quit, I was totally indifferent about finishing - it would have entailed a further twenty minutes of misery for absolutely no benefit. So I took the easy option and hopped on the bus.

I'll post up in a few days the stats and a shot of the route - it won't be pretty viewing.

Preview of Wokingham Half Marathon

I've got the Wokingham half marathon this Sunday, which was postponed from last February due to snow. I was kind of glad it was postponed back then cause I felt I could have done more training for it and if I'm honest with myself, I feel the same way now. Time and tide waits for no man, and all that.

So where am I at compared to before the Reading half - I guess I'm probably slightly fitter, been doing a fair bit this month, with the AnyOldIronman challenge and the fact that I've put gaelic football training on hold for a while. I haven't done anything now (besides a few swimming sessions) since last Thursday, a nice taper, so should be well rested going into the race on Sunday.

In the eight weeks since Reading, I've had 20 runs (127.8km), 8 cycles (305km), around 6 swims and probably 10 gaelic training sessions - averages out at around 5 sessions of exercise per week. The thing that worries me though is that they're not running.

So what do I "want" from the race on Sunday - well my number one aim is to complete the distance non-stop. I'm not particularily bothered about beating my Reading time (2hrs 13mins) but it'd be nice. I'm definitely going to aim for negative splits as well, to stop me going out too fast - I'll take the first 10km nice and easy and see how I feel after that. Finally, it's going to be my first training session for the marathon, so even more reason to just treat it like a long training run.