MK half marathon race report and Wuthering Hike pre-race report

MK half race report

Distance: 13.1 miles
Time: 01:29:59
Position: 242/3038

Early March is pretty late to have my first race of the year, but this was it. My other 2 planned races had to be aborted for various reasons (one was cancelled due to yes would you believe icy conditions - and it was supposedly a 'challenging' trail race ha ha) and I've not had a good start to the year training wise. Eilidh's various ailments and bad teething have left me down 1 session per week pretty much consistently since the start of the year.

Excuses excuses I know but I've been gradually upping my speeds and getting PBs every year since I started running half marathons 5 years ago. My previous PB set at this race last year was 01:29:06 and I was hoping to beat it, but this wasn't to be. I was lucky to stay under the 01:30:00 mark.

I ran strong for the first 5-6 miles at a consistent 6:35 - 6:42 min/mile pace then began without noticing to slow to 6:50. I regained 6:45 pace but then slowed to 7:05 and worse over miles 7 to 11 as the route turned into a fierce headwind. I just couldn't get any faster through the wind. The last mile I picked up to 6:40 pace again but too late, the PB gone for another year (c'est la vie).

Wuthering Hike pre-race report

I am filing a pre-race report because although registered and was actually in Haworth ready to race on Saturday morning I was stricken with the most torrential bout of diarrohea you could imagine. Vast volumes of pasta consumed in the interests of glycogen storage were turned through a marvellous chain of biochemical reactions to an outpouring of water with the odd brown fleck. Quiet amazing, and quite debilitating too when it comes to running 31 miles. So there I sat in my Westfield Lodge apartment overlooking the last road drag up to Penistone Hill watching the bobbing heads of runners nearing the end of their race. Gits said I feeling jealous (I hope all WHWR'ers there had a good race even if they are all gits for bobbing their heads far too happily as I looked out my window).

Where did I get the lurgy bug from? A baby of course. We went on holiday with some friends and their almot 2 year old baby boy to a Centre Parcs holiday camp thing near Nottingham. It turned into holiday sick camp. We arrived on the Monday only for them to be stricken down on the Monday night with the lurgy - they caught it from their baby son who had it the week before (lesson - do not go on holiday with babies who have just had sickness and diarrohea, even if you are paid to do so). Eilidh then caught it on Wednesday with a magnificent series of ejections from either end. Kirstin then came down with it on Wednesday night / Thursday morning and I felt pretty ropey at the same time but thought I'd escaped the worst of it. How wrong was I.

So more, tales of a poor start to the year running wise. I'm a glass half full kind of chap though so I'm happy I have a couple of extra months up my sleeve when it comes to the UTMB as compared to the WHWR. I'll do a race pace 30 miler one afternoon this week to make up for missing the Wuthering and that'll get me back on track. Until the next baby related illness incident of course! :-)