A Rainy season’s best half kilomathon – 13.1km in 1:21:20

Posted on Jun 03, 2012 under 10-15k, Long Runs, Season's Best | No Comment

For a June day, the weather looked atrocious, and when I was getting ready for my run the floor was almost icy to my bare feet. Almost weather for thermals by the looks of it, rainy, breezy, grey. Stepped out and felt a shiver down my spine and my legs goosbumped straight away, so was keen to get going and shivered a few times before the Garmin found its satellite and I set off without further ado just to get warm.

At that point it was dry, but from about 1km in I was to be accompanied by a steady light rain, not too bad once I was warmed up. Tried to keep the pace down, as the intention was to run 8 miles/13.1km and if not run under 1 hour 20, at least beat the 1 hr 24 odd I did for this distance last time. The first 3-4km felt quite tough, though seeing a couple of other runners and exchanging waves gave me a little boost. The route I chose had some hilly bits (mainly motorway or viaduct bridges etc) which added a bit of spice, though I wasn’t too keen on the bit where I got to quite a few dual carriageway crossings that didn’t go in my favour, but I needed the extension to the route as I was somewhat too close too home going another way. I gather quite some pace in the latter stages including a 5:50 split for one of the kms, but by the end of the run I was really starting to flag and as luck would have it the most of the last km was up a long slow incline which not only slowed me down but also sapped the last of my strength, and as I manged to reach the 13.1km mark fortuitously close to my house, I was slowing down almost to a crawl and was relieved to hit the stop button on the Garmin and start enjoying the endorphins running around my system 🙂

Leave a Reply