Job done

Follow-up to Someone must read my blog… from No I said DublIN marathon

Well that wasn’t so bad after all…

Sunday was the Experian Robin Hood Half-marathon in Nottingham and Nick Seagrave and I took part as part of Mixed Hockey’s fund-rasing for Ovarian Cancer Action (phew, that’s a lot of links). My task was to haul Nick’s scrawny arse around the course in under 1hr 45mins (Chip Time, not Gun Time) – 8 minute miling. Considering Nick was originally aiming for sub-2.00 this was going to be a tough-ish ask, but he’d cruised around the Godiva Harriers Autumn 5 in a little over 38mins (7min 38sec miling) the week before so eights were on the cards.

We lined up slap bang in the middle of the 1hr 40-50 block and set off at a reasonable pace, perhaps a little fast, but the hills at 2M and 4M made sure we weren’t too far ahead of the game and miles 6-10 were bang on the money. Nick was finding miles 11 and 12 a little tough going and I was a little alarmed when I heard my watch beep 10 seconds before we’d hit the mile marker. We kicked for home as I was concerned we’d have to pick up the pace about 30s/M and little goals of catching people seemed to spur him on as we overtook over 100 people in the last mile. As we hit the finishing straight (why do they insist on finishing road races on grass?) I put the foot down and squeezed through a closing gap between two runners to leave him for dead (which he later “thanked” me for) and we both got in before the clock got to the 1hr 45 mark – 1hr 43mins 7s and 9s respectively by Chip Time.

Considering I’ve done bugger all distance work recently (more speed stuff) I was quite pleased, but I suspect I’m going to have to get some “hard miles” under my belt if I want to get sub 1hr 25 for the Lady Godiva.

: 14 Sep 2006 12:21 |  Tags: Coventry Half-Marathon Lady Godiva Nottingham Robin Hood Running Training |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem