More Speed, Less Haste

Anybody keeping up with this blog (that’ll be all six of my fans then) will recall from my previous posts that I was soon to run the Roding Valley Half-Marathon. As the event has now happened, I would imagine that this post would be a useful opportunity to explain how I feel the half-marathon went.

I was not sure if I would actually have the strength to start the race, let alone complete it, because I had been suffering from a cold for the last few days. It could have been more of a mild flu than a mere cold though. I had almost convinced myself it was the ebola virus. Whatever it was, it resulted in copious amounts of yellow and green fluid being expelled from my nostrils (along with a bit of red for good measure). Thankfully, I was feeling much better by this morning when I woke up at 6.45am, and I did indeed start the race. In fact, I completed it with a time of 01:47:57 which I think is fairly respectable!

The results can be found at: http://uk.katana3.com/online/event.ctrl?cmd=result&event=1227090910

- for best viewing, set the page to show all entries.
If you cannot be bothered to click on the link, or you are one of those slightly paranoid people who assume that it will direct you to pornographic websites and endless and irritating pop-up adverts (don't worry, it doesn't), then it shows my finishing time, which places me, Martin Pampel, bib number 586, in 363rd place, out of 888 runners (although the last twenty or so did not finish the race).

Weather and temperature-wise, it was rather cold leading up to the start of the race, but it warmed up a fair bit shortly afterwards. Not too warm that I was in any danger of dehydrating. As a matter of opinion, I think these were ideal marathon weather conditions. Not too cold, not too hot. Just fine.

The idea of running a half-marathon wasn’t too daunting since I have already run at least thirteen miles in training with apparent ease. In fact, last weekend I ran twenty miles, as I did the week before. It does get harder after about the 15^th mile or so, but to get to 20 miles is great progress for me, and it’s further than I had hoped to get by this point. 

My reasoning was that if I can run as many as twenty miles, then thirteen miles shouldn’t have been too difficult. It was more the fact the route of the half-marathon was hilly in parts, but I had adequately prepared for this by running up a hill in Roding Lane North during my training. It is rather a steep hill. Not hugely steep, but a challenge to run up it, certainly. Indeed, I ran up that hill three times during the course of my twenty-mile training sessions. This training undeniably paid off because I found the hilly areas of the half-marathon to be no more or less problematic than in my training, so I got through it all relatively easily.

I was perhaps a little too modest in my last post as I was nowhere close to struggling up the hills or bringing up the rear. In fact, I'm relatively pleased with myself. For once I'm not moping around or wallowing in self-pity. I think I shall now relax in front of the telly with a nice well-earned glass of Tropicana, watch a few DVDs and admire the medal I won for this morning's efforts. And then I'm going out to a quiz this evening. Having put my legs and my body through the wringer this morning, I'll soon be doing the same with my brain.