Bristol Half Marathon 2017

Its been nearly 2 weeks since I ran the Bristol half marathon so this review is a bit overdue!

I travelled up with my friend and neighbour David and we got to the park and ride in Long Ashton nice and early and got the bus into the city centre.

Once there, you start to get a sense of the atmosphere, there’s a buzz around the place for the bigger races like this that I love. We had a little wander round and made our way to the baggage drop. This was the first time I’d done a big race without Steph and the girls being there to support me. I knew I would miss their support and especially seeing their faces after the race but it was nice to not have to worry about them finding something to do etc. while I ran.

Decent finishers medal!

So bags dropped off, we made our way towards the start. We were both in the orange wave which was the first to go with only the “fast paced club runners” in front of us. Despite both being in the same wave, we had completely different time goals. David was using the race as a training run for the upcoming Burnham half marathon which is fast and flat compared to Bristol and I was using it as a test to see where I was at in my hunt for a sub 1hr30 time.

My PB going into the race was 1hr31.53m which I achieved at Tewkesbury half marathon. I’ve always wondered whether that was a bit of a fluke given that I had to stop and walk for a section of it which made me question my fitness levels and ability to get under 1hr30 in the future.

Despite my misgivings I decided I would try to stay with the 1hr30 pacer and see what happened. At the start line he was nowhere to be seen until a couple of minutes before the start. They had the prerequisite Zumba style warm up which does nothing for me personally so I had already done my own warm up before it got too crowded and then just kept moving until the start.

We finally got the countdown and we were off. The first couple of miles of a race are often the hardest to pace as it’s all too easy to get dragged along with those around you that aren’t necessarily running at your goal pace. I however, let plenty of people go past but I tried to keep the pacer in sight. I did a fast first mile at around 6.30 then tried to settle down to a pace of around 6.50. I soon found that the pacer was going far too fast for me so I was content to let him go as I was more concerned about blowing up mid-race like I did at Tewkesbury so sensible won the day!

I managed to keep that pace relatively comfortably although there were a couple of the middle miles that went slightly over 7 minutes but I was feeling pretty good. I took my energy gels around miles 6 and 10, I only ever need two gels for this distance and sometimes wonder if I need them at all but I guess when you’re running flat out it’s not a bad thing to have them.

Around mile 10 I started feeling like I could “drop the hammer” as I like to say and push a bit harder but I soon realised that it was too early. I’m not sure why but I always seem to grow into races and feel stronger the deeper it goes. At mile 11 I had to do several watch checks as I started to realise that I was going to be closer to 1hr30 than I first thought and even if I didn’t get below that I now knew I was on for a PB.

So as the distance ticked down I upped the pace as best I could, still conscious of blowing up too soon. The last mile seemed to go on forever but as soon as I had the final corner in my sights I really opened up my legs, going past several people and then sprint finishing to beat a guy on the line! To my surprise the time above the finish line not only matched my watch but more importantly said 1hr30.09!!! NINE SECONDS!!!! I was nine seconds off hitting 1hr30 and ten away from going under it!

Delighted at the finish

Despite getting so agonizingly close to my goal, I was far from disappointed. I’d turned up in good shape but had a cough and cold so wasn’t feeling 100% and to be honest, there were times during the race where I didn’t even think I’d get close to my Tewkesbury time let alone beat it.

If you follow my Instagram then you may have seen me say this a few times but hard work really does pay off and if you put your all into something then can you be proud of the outcome no matter how good or bad.

When you’ve given everything! Photo credit, the Bristol Post

David also had a solid run and it was nice to travel up and back with him. I’m confident he has PB in him at Burnham and hopefully we’ll both be happy at the end of it.