Wokingham half marathon - a 6 minute PB

Wokingham looked like a good opportunity for a PB but it's hard to estimate my pace these days. I thought I might shave a bit off the existing 1'44'44 but not enough to get excited about. However, my comfortably hard pace turned out to be 7'30s, very pleasing, given my 6 week old 10k pace is closer to 7'40s. 9 miles passed at this surprisingly speedy pace without any incident (apart from going through what would have been a fat 10k PB), my legs felt loose and fresh, and reasonably bouncy, and my breathing wasn't too hard. Miles 10-12 are back up the gentle decline from the start, and into an increasing headwind, I lost 10-20 seconds on each of these miles but that wasn't too much of a worry, plus mile 13 was back to 7'29. I didn't like the two sharp left hand turns to the finish at all (not a criticism of the route, it was generally excellent, and an all round first rate race) but finished reasonably strongly in 1'38'55.*

I was incredibly pleased about this, at no point have I ever contemplated getting anywhere near breaking 1'40 for a half, let alone running at 7'33 pace for the whole thing. It also predicts a 3'23 - 3'30 marathon time which is a huge confidence boost. My motivation to train and enjoyment of running had gone out of the window over December / January and, shallow as it is, a good result really helps me think it's worth putting the effort in. I clearly haven't reached my full potential yet. A nice base of almost 100 marathons, no injuries and rejuvenated enthusiasm should set the spring up to be a good few months.

Well done to all the other PBs and strong performances yesterday. There were loads of them. Thanks to the shout from Lully too. There was a great turn out in the pub later, I was proud to be wearing a Fetch vest (yes, just a vest, in the wind and rain, in February. I'm well 'ard.)

*This is my garmin time. Provisional chip time is 16 seconds quicker but I suspect they will be amended downwards, as it seems like provisional times started from the second mat on the way out. My garmin clocked 13.10 miles from the first mat, and most people report a 10-20 second discrepancy between their watch times and the chip times. If the finalised results give me a 1'38'39, then I'll be even happier, but I'm not counting on it.