This bank holiday weekend (with fine weather, who knew that was possible?) saw my warm-up event for the Team Sheep summer of sporty goodness in aid of Friendship Works – the MKM Half Marathon. You can read about my preparations in this previous post. Running the race with me were my “we run for cake” running partner Chris, my brother Adam, and two of Adam’s colleagues. And several thousand other people, obviously; it wasn’t just the five of us randomly running around Milton Keynes. That would be odd.
After a carefully planned muesli & toast breakfast (avoiding the hotel sausages, that took effort!), we then had a nightmare short drive to Milton Keynes Stadium for the “VIP” pre-booked parking, the last quarter mile of which took 45 highly frustrating minutes. We’d left plenty of time so I wasn’t worried about being late, but I was concerned about running out of petrol. The fuel light had come on as we left the hotel, as the drive was so short I hadn’t worried about it but I hadn’t factored in long periods of idling!
We eventually parked, fuel gauge below zero but still ticking over. The problems had been caused by people who had queued without having booked – perhaps half of the queued cars – each of whom then argued with the one marshal checking reservations. One or two signs back in the queue saying “pre-booked parking only” would have helped massively.
Anyway, Milton Keynes this may be but enough about parking. We reached the stadium and met up with Chris and Adam’s colleagues. The race start was well organised and we dropped our bags and made our way to the starting line. I consumed my pre-race Technical Sports Nutrition Pack (eight jelly babies) and Audrey went to find her first spectator vantage point.
Unusually for a race with several thousand entrants, there was one mass start with no pace-related ordering, so it was up to you to position yourself further forward or backward depending on your intended pace. I was worried this would cause problems at the start, but it worked surprisingly well – the roads in Milton Keynes are very wide so once through the starting gates there was space to safely ease past people (or let people pass) without affecting your own pace.
I ran the first three miles as intended, around 5m05-5m10 per kilometre, keeping my speed mostly under control. The first drink station was around the 3 mile point, and I was much thirstier than normal – it was hotter than all of our training runs – so I dumped the Lucozade Sport I’d been sipping since the start and switched to water. This helped, and I still had eight jelly babies stashed in my pockets in case I needed fuel, so all was good.
I tried to start to lift my pace towards my target 4m58 per kilometre, but didn’t have it in me. The course felt significantly hillier than the 174ft of elevation gain the race materials suggested (after the race I checked and, indeed, I make it 585ft – not massive but a lot more than expected), and it repeatedly went down and up the same incline in central Milton Keynes (see miles three to seven above).
While I had my pace about right for the first 3 miles, the fact that the first 2 miles had been a constant slight climb had taken more out of me than I realised, and by mile 8 I was 1.5 minutes behind where I needed to be for a 1h45 total. Realising I was very unlikely to meet my target, my spirits dropped somewhat and I slowed further, until around three miles from the finish, when I managed to lift the pace some, still feeling generally dreadful.
The last mile and a half looped around a lake on trails then entered the stadium to cross the line. The trail was a bit twisty, making it hard to keep up the pace, but the final stretch running through the tunnel into the stadium and out for a lap around the pitch was a great finish, and I sprinted to cross the line in 1h50m05s.
I’m happy with the time – while I didn’t quite reach the 1h45 that I was targeting, if someone had said to me a year ago that I’d be running a half marathon in less than two hours I’d have laughed. I can see some of the things I need to work on (hills, more speed work, and I suspect I over-tapered) and I’ll be back to do another half before long. Adam finished in 2h19 and Chris in 2h28 – see the slideshow below for more photos of the finish. We won’t talk about the ludicrously fast times set by Adam’s colleagues.
The race done, getting out of the infernal car park took an entire hour, and with our petrol level critical we resorted to poor old Audrey (who’d walked seven miles in the commission of taking the photographs you see above and cheering us on splendidly) pushing the car when the traffic did move slightly, instead of us sitting with the engine idling. Nevertheless, we eventually made it out and to a petrol station, then took a scenic drive through central London on the way back.
And now, on to the cycling! Audrey and I have around 13 weeks until Ride London, most of the training plans we’ve read are around 12 weeks long, so the timing has worked well (more through luck than judgement). We just need to decide on the training plan we’re following and we’ll be golden…
