Well, yesterday, in the sun and heat Holly and I ran the Henfield Half Marathon. This was Holly’s first half marathon and came almost straight after a hard weeks sailing at Cowes (they came 2nd in their class) so I think it is fair to say that I never intended to “race” this one and I just used it as my LSR of the week. We finished in 2:43:25, not quite last !
The route is primarily off road with one very rutted section along a river bank, none of the hills are too bad but there are a number of gates and stiles to cross and in general I have found that running through longish grass always slows me down a bit… Some parts were in full sun and in 20+ degrees it made it feel very hot…
What I did notice is that my training runs in the heat have helped to acclimatise me to it, Holly hadn’t had the chance to do the same runs due to her sailing commitments and the heat really did hit her, throw in to the mix her asthma and I think she did really well to finish, there were points during the run that I thought she may not make it, especially when she was feeling very sick, giddy and seeing stars…… So Holly now has a HM PB to beat on her next race in November. Although we are entering the same race I will be racing it rather than running together as we did for Henfield.
So, my next HM targets are :
October – I am running a very hilly trail HM, similar terrain to the Steyning Stinger, my target time for this one is 2:15 (I completed the Steyning Stinger in 2:26:59 so I really want to improve on this time)
November – This will be my first road HM, it is meant to be flat and certainly shouldn’t be 20+ degrees, my target time for this is 2:00
Between now and October I will be running more hills to improve my speed going up them, this is one area that I think will make a big difference to my HM time for the October race, then I will switch to more road running to work on my speed for the flat road race.
With the club we are focusing our training on a flat 10k race so I’m hoping this will also help towards my 2hr HM goal for November.
I’ll let you know how it goes !
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Location:Henfield Half Marathon