Wisely elected to forego Laura’s birthday party Saturday night, as had to be up bright and early for the Brighton Beacon half marathon. I missed the Brands Hatch half last weekend as a result of a clash with return from snowboarding, so Sunday was my last chance for an organised run before the big day on April 13th. Reuben had suggested the run, so we were planning to meet him somewhere around the route, I also had Irfan in tow after his recent success on our forays around London.

Kat came along to watch and to get a few photos, but she managed to miss me at every opportunity along the route! She did get a few pics, but only of  the other boys. I guess my lagging 2-3 minutes behind them at most points meant she’d packed up the camera before I appeared. Good work!   ;)   Nevermind, there will at least be a bunch of photos on the web in the next few day, so I’ll pop back and supplement this post when those are available.

The data makes for an interesting read. Glad to see that over this shorter distance my pace is a pretty reasonable 8:43 mins/mile. The fast section at the start is me running with Irfan, twenty minutes in we both realise that he’s going too quick for me, so we split up; I drop down to ~9 min/miles for about an hour, and then pick it up to 8:40’s for the last three miles. There’s a pretty horrible extended hill in mile 11, but then it’s a quick sprint over the home stretch for the final mile and a half. Despite coming in about 4 minutes behind the boys, I’m happy with my race plan. Up until picking-up the pace I felt pretty comfortable, and fairly confident that I could churn out at least another six or seven miles at the same pace. Having run four properly long runs now, I’m happy that I’m broadly on target for the full distance. Just need to get one more big run in next weekend before heading out to Thailand on vacation. Then hopefully can motivate myself for a final big push in the sweltering heat and peak week (distance wise) just before I return to the UK on Easter weekend.