My first Half Marathon completed!

The last six months of preparation came to fruition on Sunday when I ran the Royal Parks Half Marathon, my first Half Marathon!  Here are the gory details.

I completed the 13.1 mile course in 2:06:56 - 11 minutes under my target time and 50 seconds per mile quicker than last years 10k pace!  I averaged 9min 45sec per mile, though after the second mile I got it into my head that I could possibly finish in under 2 hours, which caused me to exceed my pace for most of the race.  I was feeling remarkably good for the first 10 miles, especially overtaking many of the runners in my pace group, but the last two miles were particularly difficult as I ran out of energy.  I could feel the back of my neck tingling and, deciding that it probably wasn't a good sign, slowed down a bit.  Seeing a couple of fellow runners being tended to by paramedics in the last half mile left me in no doubt that, taking it easy at the end  was the best course of action!  My legs have only just stopped aching, but strangely I somehow avoided getting any blisters on my feet, a testament perhaps to the "Twin Skin" socks I wore.

Most runners were wearing their particular charity's official race t-shirt/vest and were getting cheered by the official cheering squads.  Thus I began to feel a little left out. Of course, I only have myself to blame as Help a London Child did send me running vest.  Not being a vest kind of guy, I sent it back in exchange for a running t-shirt, only to find that it was just an ordinary cotton t-shirt.  I was determined that I would run in a technical t-shirt whilst trying to promote the cause, hence how the "runmalrun.com" t-shirt came to be.  In practice this meant that no one really knew who I was running for, although I did hear a few chants of "Run Mal, Run" and "nice lamb chops"!  Next time I will probably stick with the official running top...

I might not have had a large cheering squad, but I did have Noreen who completed "Team Run, Mal, Run", proudly wearing the other running t-shirt I had printed!  She doubled as photographer, so had her own race to run, catching me at various points around the course.  We forgot to take the proper camera to the race, so all pictures were taken on my phone, which Noreen learnt to use that morning!  There are pre race pictures as well as at 4, 7 and 10 miles here, though she didn't get a picture of me crossing the finish line - the phone went into standby as I was "sprinting" for the finish!  The official photo of me about 50 metres from finish line is here and you can watch a pretty grainy video of me crossing the line here.

Training for this run clearly helped with improving my stamina and pace, so I can only wonder how quick I could have been, had I been more disciplined in following my training schedule.  That leads me nicely to my future plans...  Whilst I have no immediate plans for any more charity runs, I will definitely continue training, trying to get those miles under 9 minutes!  I think it is pretty likely that I will do more charity runs in future and the next one will probably be a full marathon!  Watch this space is  an appropriate phrase right about now.

Last but not least, I am delighted to tell you that I have now exceeded my fundraising target!  A big thank you to everyone who has sponsored me, I couldn't have done this without you.