Nike Milton Keynes Half Marathon race report

Distance: 13.1 miles
Terrain: paths
Ascent/descent: 51'/81'
Time: 01:29:06 (previous PB 01:31:42)
Mile splits: 6:28, 6:46, 6:44, 6:45, 6:51, 6:43, 6:47, 6:49, 6:57, 6:49, 6:53, 6:48, 6:31
Position: 132/2091

I managed to stay off the already opened bottle of Italian red and got a reasonable amount of sleep before the MK 1/2 on Sunday so things started well. I met a few other runners from the club who were also aiming to run sub 1:30 and we made our way towards the front of the pack - but not too far forward. After five minutes of standing around, surrounded by the smell of vaseline (mmm nice) we were off.

I had set up the virtual training partner on my garmin 205 to run the race at 6:50 min/mile pace - i.e. to get in by 1:29:30 so that I had a margin of error if things went wonky towards the end.

About 1/2 a mile in some guy in a red t-shirt elbowed and bashed his way through between myself and Mark, another runner from the club. Totally unnecessary conduct at all but particularly that early on. He might have saved oh a second by pushing through us on a corner. Anyhoo I clocked him as he looked like he was puffing already and thought you're going to struggle later.

Sure enough he did. Mark and I passed him at mile 7 and he clearly didn't like it one bit. Puffing a little louder, snorting and spitting loudly he passed us. Mark and I kept running at the same consistent pace knowing the red top runner would blow up. And sure enough he did again. We past him without altering pace and just kept going. You could hear him snorting and puffing behind us, unable to speed up. He didn't catch us again and we soon had some distance between him and us.

We kept the same pace up until the cross over point on the figure of eight(ish) course (Woughton on the Green - pronounced woofton on the green rather comically) when Mark began to slow. I kept up the pace and gradually peeled away eventually catching up with the fast short distance runner in our club - Ryan James. When I hit the last mile I sped up and kept speeding up with a wee sprint finish at the end to take a few extra positions. I came in 3 seconds faster than Ryan - a first!

How pleased am I? Very. Several beers were consumed afterwards, partly because I had daftly not actually arranged to meet my wife at any particular place so it took us over an hour to find each other. I was absolutely frozen and was beginning to have difficulty moving my fingers - much ale required, for purely medicinal purposes of course.