Running a PB!

I most certainly heart running a PB. Last weekend I competed in the Richmond Half Marathon. It's a great course, not a hill in sight, quiet roads and great scenery. It's also a running club organised half marathon, so there's much fewer runners than the big money-making half marathons. It also means most runners are semi-serious (committed) runners that run regularly and belong to a running club. It's great standing at the start seeing all the different clubs being represented. A nice social occasion. Until the horn sounded.

The plan was to run my own race and not run alongside my training partner Beloki as he has the tendency to go out too quickly for my liking. I prefer to start out on race plan pace and remain consistent through the race. After 3 miles I was feeling amazingly good. Not breathing hard, managing to stay under 7 minutes per mile and still enjoying the sights. It was an awesome morning along the Thames. Sunny and the perfect temperature for a race.

Miles 8 and 9 were tough. Partly because we were running on the long straight tow path between Hampton Court and Kingston but also because the loose surface of the tow path felt awkward to push the pace on.

Finally I got to the last mile were I was able to really keep the pace going which felt great. It's so cool to finish a race strongly. I put in a cheeky sprint over the last 100m just to get in front of my training partner, mainly for psychological reasons : )

The other significant point is that this PB came after a few weeks of really hard training sessions with the UK Ironman in mind. The Richmond race was all part of the preparation so to be getting faster means all the extra swimming and riding I'm doing is helping my running hugely.

So with a new PB of 1h31m35s I'm hoping it's not long until I can try go under 1h30m. Small steps.