This morning I took part in my biggest challenge of this year to date – a half marathon to be run over a distance of 13.1 miles !

Throughout this year the challenges have been steadily rising in terms of difficulty, and with one eye on next years big challenge of a 70.3 Ironman event, today was going to be a real eye opener , and would give me some idea of how far down the road I had come and how much more work was still to be done.

A good start this morning was the fact that the clocks had converted to winter time overnight meaning an extra hour in bed which helped as getting up time would have been 5.00 which is not pleasant on a Sunday morning ! I had another eye on the weather as all week there was doom and gloom reported as heavy rain was coming for the weekend, however thankfully this had passed overnight leaving very little wind and quite a nice dry day.

For those people considering entering next years event , parking is excellent, costs a pound and is very close to the start – check out the directions from the race pack , this was the best start to get to all year.

We made our way to Coventry and arrived with about three quarters of an hour to spare , enough time to go and buy an event T –shirt (nice!) and get my photo taken with the Barclays Premier League trophy (sweet! even if it did have united colours on it). It was a well organised event, with clear directions, good toilet facilities and a good number of participants (2500 or so).

I lined up in my starting zone (2hrs 15mins -2hrs 30mins) based on my predicted finishing time of somewhere near 2hrs 20 mins and did some warming up, did a last check to make sure I had my i-pod, gel, headband, and watch !

At a little over 9.30 there was no gun but the announcer told us that we were off !
I felt really confident over the first mile, and I knew I could run the distance having completed 11 and 12 mile training runs in the two weeks beforehand, and had to really pull myself back from going at stupid fast speed. The first mile is out of the town centre, flat, with lots of well wishers cheering you on. Miles 2 to 3 you go through the suburbs of Coventry and at about 3 miles you get your first incline, not too bad , but enough to let you know that that it is not the last or the worst that you will come across. After this you run through what looked like a park lane and there was the first water station at exactly the right time.

I was still feeling OK at this point like I had on my runs, and then at mile 4 there was a big old long drag up a hill at the back of a housing estate and it was a bit of a killer for me as I am used to running flat distances ! ( Note to self – get your backside up waddo hill every now and again ) This took some time out of me as the pace up that hill wasn’t very good, but I took some comfort from the amount of people who had started to walk by this point and kept plodding on. There was another water station just before the six mile marker came up, which was reached in just over 1.02 which was a good pace.

There seemed to be an endless procession of inclines to run up at this point and miles 6 to 9 were definitely more of a struggle to keep the earlier pace. The thing I remember most about this part was a nice breeze and leaves being blown across the road on one of the short flat bits of road ! Mile marker number 9 appears at the bottom of a sweeping long decline and then it’s a sweeping long incline (this part of the race can be seen on the 2008 video on YouTube) you then run through and around the University of Warwick, where there is a water station which offered both water and Gatorade. It was back through another estate before we reached mile 10 and a real nasty hill – there is a down, through and up subway to negotiate at the top and I’m pleased to say that the inclines are done at this point !

You soon  leave built up civilisation and the last few miles are through parkland. There is one last water station at just before 11 miles. This is where the race became really hard, the legs were hurting and I was empty – the hills had really worn me down more than I had realised. The last couple of miles were a killer and seemed to go on and on , it really was difficult to keep going at times and all I wanted to do was see the finishing line.   

Thankfully , the finishing line did approach and I gratefully crossed the line in 2.17.34 , a time I was chuffed to bits with as it was well within my 2.20 target.

My final impressions of the Coventry Half Marathon are that it is a great test, a well organised race, a brilliant first race to do at this distance, and to top it off you get a great medal !