Pete's Blog

Norwich Half

2010-11-28T11:28:00.000-08:00

Well after spending ages trying to work out how I was going to get to Norwich in time for the start of today's half marathon (Engineering works on the London to Norwich line), it was postponed...

Hopefully it'll be rescheduled for January next year...

http://www.cityofnorwichhalfmarathon.com/

Stevenage Half

2010-11-16T13:44:00.001-08:00

Ventured out to Stevenage (out near Luton), last Sunday to run in their half marathon.

It was by far the smallest race that I've entered (569 runners), so was kinda cool not to have to deal with a huge crowd.

Being a smaller race, it naturally didn't attract the big sponsors and so there wasn't the huge piles of freebies and more importantly, no where to buy any pre-race foodage... (Well there was, but I didn't find it until after the run). Due to my poor planning, I ended up going four hours between breakfast and the start of the race, so a couple of km in I was feeling hungry and a bit flat.

To be honest, at the five km mark I felt like dropping out. My knee had started playing up and was lacking any energy - even after a tasty orange gel. Put my head down and kept going and started to feel a bit better but I never felt comfortable and struggled for some big chunks of the run. I finished with a time of 2:10. I was disappointed as I wanted to improve on my previous time with the aim to break the 2hr mark in Norwich. Naturally not every race can't be a PB, so more motivation to do better in three weeks in Norwich.

As a prize for finishing, everyone was given the brightest yellow running top I've ever seen - will be good for training since it's now getting dark at 5PM.

The organisers had buses to pick people up from near the train station and take them to the start (and take back of course). Plenty of marshals around the course to point you in the right direction and of course encourage you along. Water stations were handing out plastic cups of water, which I naturally spilled down my front :) Was a good run despite my time.

http://www.fvspartans.org.uk/

Birmingham Half

2010-11-08T12:17:00.000-08:00

On the 24th of October I headed up to Birmingham for their half marathon. Went up on the Friday night with Kathy and had a bit of a look around the city. Didn't do a great deal of research on things to do so didn't end up seeing much - although the weather on the Saturday was pretty crap so spent most of the afternoon watching Goldfinger and Where Eagles Dare :)

For the most part, the race was really well organised, however there were a couple of things that really detracted from it:

The course was very narrow in places which resulted in having to walk through the bottlenecks
The finish area couldn't handle the number of competitors, so the crowd of finishers waiting to get their timing chips cut off their shoes backed up over the finish line. I got to within five metres of the finish and had to stop because of the crowd - took a further three minutes to get over the line.

I managed to finish in 2:05 a new PB, so was happy with that :)

Despite the crapness at the finish line, I'd definitely go back again.

Random story; I was standing at the start chatting to a random guy and girl, the girl looks at my bib number and asks what the number was, look at hers and they were consecutive... Give that there was about 20,000 people there, thought that was kinda cool... Or not... :)

Royal Parks Half

2010-11-08T12:07:00.001-08:00

Continuing with the slow posts...

On 10/10/10 the Royal Parks Foundation held a half marathon around London passing through four of the Royal Parks.

Through some error, I ended up with an orange bib, which meant that I was supposed to start up the front. I got as far back as I could - there was a fence between the second and third groups - and tried to keep out of peoples way. Having said that, I was rather annoyed with three guys who had pushed passed me whilst waiting for the race to start, not 500m after the start, I ran passed them as they were walking in the middle of the road...

The race was pretty well run, plenty of drinks stations with bottles of water and Lucozade. Big crowd and awesome weather made for a great run. I finished with a time of 2:09, so a reasonable improvement on the 2:17 earlier in the year. So was rather pleased with myself :)

Paris Marathon

2010-11-08T12:05:00.001-08:00

Another really late post...

On the 11th April this year Ching and I (along with 35,000 other people) ran the Paris marathon.

Entry in to the Paris marathon is first come, first served, the only condition is that you have a medical certificate saying that you're fit and healthy... And paid the entrance fee of course :)

The race was really well organised, all of the handouts were written in French and English. The running expo on the Saturday (where we had to hand in our medical certificate and get our number and timing chip) was huge. Lots of people helping to give out the bibs and plenty of freebies as well.

The race had water and fruit stations every 5km. The stations were about 100m long, there was plenty of fruit (orange quarters, bananas and trail mix) and bottles of water. Again, plenty of people handing the water and fruit out.

The only gripe that I have with the race was that there wasn't enough porta-loos at the start, so ended up with people just pissing on the side of the road. Although once the race started guys and gals were darting off to the sides of the roads to relieve themselves. Apart from that, everyone seemed in good spirits, PA with music pumping at the start, bands playing along the route, huge crowds cheering, was a great atmosphere.

Must admit, it was really cool to be running around Paris - the race starts at the Arc de Triomphe and heads down The Avenue des Champs-Élysées thenheads out to the suburbs and then back in to the city, eventually going passed the Eiffel Tower and finishing fairly close to the start.

As for my race...

I hit the 21km mark in just over two hours - I was hoping for a sub five hour run, so thought I was doing well. The next 10 or so km were hard, then I hit the 34km mark and I hit the wall rather hard. At this point everything was starting to ache, I had no energy left and still had 8km to go. At the 36km mark, everything that was aching, was now hurting and I was absolutely hating it. I was determined to finish, but was adamant that I was never going to do something so stupid ever again. My heart sank every time one of the pacing runners went passed and I couldn't keep up.

At 40km, only 2km to go - less than the distance around the block that I use to train at home - I was feeling a bit better about things. When I finally saw the finish line I was over the moon and did my version of sprinting to get over the finish line for a time of 5hr 17mins. Hips, back, knees and feet were hurting, but I had the biggest smile on my face - felt awesome to finish.

Caught the Eurostar back to London, walking along the platform, there was a procession of people hobbling along with their marathon goodies bag - all of them looking rather pleased with themselves.

As for me doing 'something so stupid' again... I've registered for the Paris Marathon in 2011 :)

Wokingham Half Marathon

2010-11-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

So taken a short while to post this... Esp given the race was in February and it's now November...

Anyway, back on the 21st of February headed out to Wokingham to run in their half marathon. Was in the lead up to me running in the Paris marathon in April, so was a good practice run. Was also only my second race, so figured would be good to see how things run since I wouldn't be able to understand what the organisers would be saying in Paris...

Ran with a couple of mates and also had some other friends on the sideline cheering us on which was great - especially given it was cold and wet.

Managed a time of 2 hours 17 minutes. Not bad for my first big run, but certainly plenty of room for improvement.

London Eye

2007-01-26T09:40:00.000-08:00

Well since I'm going to start putting real things on here, thought I might start with the visit to the London Eye the other night.

Pics are on picasaweb

Test

2007-01-26T09:37:00.001-08:00

This is a testing post...