So this was the reason for writing the blog - the journey to Edinburgh and yesterday that journey began quietly and with relatively little fuss at the Lancaster Half Marathon.

Before the race

Building up to the race I wasn't very confident; I only entered on Thursday evening as only 3 weeks ago I had been suffering from Swine Flu. I didn't get it as badly as some other people have; but it made a massive difference to my lungs; to the point where I could hardly train.

I decided to give it a go after training on Thursday night and realising that I still maintained some level of fitness.

The paramaters of success were shifted in light of my sufferance and under 1:50 was the goal.

The Race Itself

The race set off at around 11:02 and had an excellent turnout; around 670 runners. I started from well back in the main group as I had to go for a lat minute toilet break. That meant being stuck behind a lot of slower runners as the pelaton hurtled towards the city centre.

For anyone who knows Lancaster; it started at Salt Ayre and made its way along the cycle paths towards the Millenium Bridge; heading over the bridge and out into the Lune estuary along the cycle paths. The route looped back towards Lancaster heading past the golf club and then rejoining the original track for the final 3 miles back to the Salt Ayre track.

Conditions

There was no rain on the day; and the temperature was just right. There had however been torrential rains in the days building up to event; so for a lot of the cycle track sections along the estuary mud was flinging from the heels of eager trainers.

There was a hill at 8 miles and as we finished the climb and quickly descended into a series of back lanes we were greeted by... A 300m flood.
I resurfaced on the other side; knowing that I would have to run the last 3.5 miles with trenchfoot.

Finishing

Although my feet were aching; I managed to keep up the same pace throughout the final section of the race and ended up blowing away my pre race predictions with a time of 1:38:26.

The aftermath

I run wearing a Garmin watch - which provides GPS tracking to see where I've ran; it will measure distances; calories and speed. When I loaded the information on the computer I was pleased to see that my average speed per mile was 7mins 30 seconds and that generally the speed of my miles never altered by more than 3 seconds. Which is a good sign of consistency and I can now start to think aobut becoming consistent at running miles slightly slower for the marathon - but having ran 13 miles; 26 seems a step too far!

Have a good day everyone; this is I'm sure my most dreadful post to date; but hey I guess it was the reason to start the blog! The fat mans struggle to beat the skinnies at their own game.