Ipswich Half Marathon

Firstly, for the benefit of @mia79gbr, here are my new shoes:

I know what you're thinking, bad idea to wear new trainers in a half marathon, having only run 2.5 miles n them on Wednesday- but I had a few more bad ideas up my sleeve.  A terrible headache all day yesterday and not managing to keep anything down until after lunchtime probably wasn't the best state to go into a half marathon, nor setting off too fast, thinking this was a flat course.  Here is the logic:

East Anglia is flat.  Ipswich is in East Anglia.  Therefore, Ipswich half marathon is flat.  Right?

WRONG!

Toughest road race I've ever done.  I should have stayed at the start area for 3 hours bouncing on this:

Given the early start, David didn't come with me, he would never have known.  But since I've decided to have the next 7 days off running, I figured I better get a race in.

I actually woke up feeling as if I had enough sleep, which was an unusual feeling at 6am- incidentally, this is the time my alarm goes off on weekdays too, but it's usually followed by my rolling over to have a snooze.  I got up to prepare the breakfast of champions.  Porridge!  After eating half of it, I'd had enough, but then I remembered 13.1 miles is quite a long way to run, and I better fuel up.

Now, Ipswich half marathon had organised free parking in the NCP car park.  Awesomeness- 10 minute walk from the start.  I wish more races did more for decent parking.  I've found the local races exceptionally good in that matter.  

I didn't expect to see anyone I know, but the beauty of Parkrun is that I did see a bunch of people I recognised and a couple I know.  Most Essex based runners were doing the Pleshey half today, as its part of the Essex championships.  I thought that Pleshey was hilly and Ipswich flat.  So I chose to do Ipswich.  D'oh.  Turns out my geography degree does not extend to knowledge of geography of my local area.  All of this rambling is to avoid reliving the experience of this race.

Here is the course profile:

It looks as if the last mile is predominantly downhill.  It didn't feel like that.

Here's the course map:

Not how I would plan a half marathon course, lots of twists and turns, some really sharp, back on yourself and uphill.  Really really tough course.

My fastest mile was mile 2- 7:52

Slowest was mile 8- 9:26. I had given up at this point.  I managed to get through halfway in 1:49 pace, and then considered I could slow down a lot to get a pb.  This was bad, I was meant to be racing even paced, or negative split, but what's so great about a negative split if u get the time you want.  I was going to defy sports science and get a positive split... Yeah, it was all my choice, not that I was getting tired and it hurt.  Another lady runner caught me walking and encouraged me.  This got me going again and I kept her within my sights.  Now, during the hills, I had remembered an article I read recently about hill running technique.  Both on the up and down hill, it was important to shorten your stride and increase leg turnover.  It worked, and both ways I overtook people doing this, including this girl on the last downhill.

However, the uphills in the park around mile 10-11 really got me, and I stopped to walk again, she overtook me, but not for long.  No matter what the race, I can always get myself going again when there is less than 2 miles to go.  I did. But I couldn't get any pace.  12 mile sign, and downhills, yippee! But I was suspicious, I remembered seeing the 13 mile sign on a distinctly uphill portion of path, and I was right, with half a mile to go, uphills started appearing, and I just had nothing to push with.  800m to go, and I was 1 min 30 under 1:50... If I could just get some pace, I could do it.

O no! Another steep uphill bit with a turn back on yourself corner! Seriously, this was silly.  It was gone, all these twists lost me so much pace.

Eventually I crossed the line in 1:50:20, and I just felt relief.  A pretty purple medal and downed a bottle of water.  I went over to watch others finishing. And saw a casualty happen, a man tripped and fell literally 5 metres from the finish line, but then he didn't get up.  It was quite scary.  One of th spectators got him into the recovery position as we were all calling out for first aiders.  It was quite scary, but thanks t the course, there was no danger of anyone managing a sprint finish.  I get quite squeamish, and there were so many people helping him at this stage, that I didn't want to watch, I just hope he's ok now.  I turned to look st the finish line, and omg, there was a celebrity there, but damn, my phone was n my bag, which was still in baggage drop.. Did I go and say hi, or did I go for getting my phone and what I really wanted, which was a photo.  Well, I picked the latter:

What a great Sunday morning... A half marathon pb by almost 6 minutes, and a photo with Colin Jackson, who looks like he's trying to be cool despite the smelly mess standing next to him... :)

And now, to hang my trainers up for a week...