I did it! I finished another half marathon! It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t fast but I got there in the end….and I briefly got to meet #NARM (Stephanie the Magpie, not a real magpie, who helps the parkrunshow with their social media stuff).
The Down Tow Up Flow half marathon took us from Windsor to Marlow along the River Thames, and I was hoping to keep a nice even, steady pace and perhaps push for a 2:20 and claim a new PB. It wasn’t to be though, the weather was hot and even with my amazingly sexy, super soaked Buff, I was struggling to keep my temperature down after the first water stop. So best laid plans went slightly out of the window and I started adding more walking into the mix.
On the plus side, despite the heat and the extra effort this meant I had to put in to keep moving forward I had no doubt at all that I would finish, it was just a matter of when. I did have a minor wobble about how hard it all was at around 8 miles, but a quick check of my phone showed that The Boyf had finished about 5 minutes previously and so I knew that he’d be there waiting for me at the finish. In fact, he waited about 600m from the finish to confirm that the “400m to go” sign was in fact telling the truth and that I could sprint finish safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be caught out by a secret 1km loop around a random field.
I also had a Garmin glitch, when it decided to reboot itself! Luckily I was at a water station so was able to restart it without missing too much, and I had a back-up logging via Runkeeper as well.
All in all I think it was a good run, I enjoyed it for the most part but would definitely have preferred it to be a little bit cooler, I’m not a fan of the heat and do struggle if I have no way of getting cool, and let’s face it, unless there’s a breeze, running isn’t exactly cooling!
Official time was 2:41:36, not my best but still a finish, Runkeeper stats can be viewed here.
Looking forward to meeting you probably at another race soon! x
Most definitely!