Today would be a good test of how well that has gone, and how much fitness I've lost in those months. My revised plan was to try and break 1-22, which based on my 10k time of 37:23 at Blyth should be achievable if things went right on the day. My B goal if it didn't was to try and break my pb of 1:23:.31.
John was trying to break 1:40 but wasn't confident he would be able to before the start of the race as this was his first half marathon and he wasn't feeling great.
As we set off I felt pretty comfortable and settled into a good pace, doing both the first 2 miles in 6.02. The next few miles went by at pretty much the same pace and I wondered if this would come back to bite me later in the race but I decided to stick at it while I could and then push through the remaining miles when it started to hurt (hopefully not many of them).
The course winds its way around the city centre and brought back memories of the marathon a few years earlier. One of the nice features of it as that there are a number of places where the route doubles back on itself and you can see the runners coming down the other side of the road. This lets you potentially see the leaders, and also the other runners behind you so you can see how they are doing too.
After about 7 miles I started to feel the effects and my pace started dipping to around 6-10 average. I felt ok about this, but knew that I couldn't let it drop much further if I wanted to hit my target. There were a handful of other runners around me at this point and I managed to pick a few of them off - probably as a result of them setting off too quickly rather than me speeding up.
At around the 9 miles point the route goes back over to the north side of the river and it was nice to see Chris Redfern just over the bridge cheering me on.
I was starting too feel really tired at this point and it was a real struggle to try and keep my pace from dropping. The route pretty much goes up the coast, through Roker Park and then back down the way you come to the finish in the stadium.
Once it got to 11 miles in Roker Park I started to feel confident that I was going to hit my target of 1-20. I think one of the skills in endurance running is regulating your speed so that you have an even paced run. If you are able to speed up in the last few miles then you have probably started too cautiously, if you really struggle in the last few miles then you've probably went off too fast. Once you reach a certain point you know that your going to be ok as you have the strength to get through the remaining miles at a decent pace. For me today that was the 11 mile point.
I'm not saying the last few miles were easy, far from it, but I was able to run them at close to my limit which I wouldn't have been able to sustain for the entire race. The last mile especially was really tough - the last drag into the stadium seems to go on forever and then you also have to go round the corner to the end.
Normally I can muster a sprint finish at the end of the race, but I didn't have the energy today which made me think that I had probably got my pacing about right, apart from going off a bit too quickly at the start.
1:21:50 at the end then - a massive PB which I was over the moon with. Jim didn't quite hit his target of breaking 1-20, but he still had a fantastic race and finished in 1:20:45 - a PB.
There were also PB's for Dave (1:30:29) and Gemma (1:33:03) and John came in at 1:36:41 -well inside his target. There were also solid performances from fellow Saltwellians Mel, Annie & David.
So all in all a great day out. I feel really pleased that I managed to knock over a minute and a half off my PB with the amount of training I've been doing lately so my next target it a sub 1-20, probably at the Great North run later in the year unless I do another half before then.
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