Silverstone Half Marathon Race Report

As part of London Marathon training you obviously have to get a lot of mileage in. So my thoughts were I might as well get medals for some of these miles I stomp through. The girls and I have signed up to Berlin half marathon- the next Bridge The Gap event with Run Dem Crew. I tried to get a place for Brighton half marathon but just missed the deadline.  But luckily we got the chance to do Silverstone half marathon. Marathon training, as expected, has not been easy- I'll let you know what's been going in another post! I've had a host of niggles and injuries. As a result of this, training was pretty much non-existent the 2 weeks before Silverstone. I have been doing some cycling, yoga, core work and weights to make up for it however!

We got up early and braced ourselves for a 2 hour ride up to Silverstone race track. I was quite excited about it but the weather was so bad. The further we went away from London the worse the weather seemed to get. When we finally got there the weather hadn't changed- in fact it just got worse!

I went to the under 2 hour area for a wishful PB- that was with a flat course in mind and weather that could potentially get better. Because of our usual lateness I was in the wrong start time of 2hrs 25. I tried to get past the crowds to a sub 2 hour pace but it was such a tight squeeze. The weather wasn't stopping anyone, people came in crowds which unfortunately made it even harder for me to get past people. I managed to get to the 2 hour 10 mins pace but the energy that took for me to weave in and out of runners really took it out of me, this was made even harder due to the winding nature of the course. Mile 3 I was considering giving it up.

With 3 loops of the track ahead of me I had to get into the right mind frame. I smiled, turned up the volume of my running playlist (UK grime always gets me going) and got things moving again. The second loop of the track involved loads of loops in order to make up the 13.1 miles.

I managed to get away from some of the crowd but now to my surprise there were hills... And they didn't stop. They weren't huge hills but they were slow hills that kept popping up. I put all my energy into getting up the hills but when I got to something like my tenth hill my legs started getting tired. The pain started kicking in at the 10th mile. I stopped and stretched for a bit but my legs were about to give way so I had to keep going.

All in all this race on this day was hard. Unfortunately the wind was in full action and seemed to be going against me the whole way. I finished in 2 hours 8 minutes. No PB but a big learning curve (no pun intended but lolz) showing me that races won't always be the best. But I came away appreciating my past races that went great and looking forward to my future runs. Looking even more forward to Berlin... And the real biggy London! Onwards and upwards yo!

P.s. How good is the medal this year?!

P.p.s. Any advice on how I can work on my race day pics? lolz