Event 19 - Windsor Trail Half Marathon

It felt quite special going to Windsor this morning following the recent birth of a new royal - congratulations Megan and Harry. The atmosphere in the air was regal! My Dad came to support me and I had plans to beat my PB of 2hrs 7mins. I hadn’t had a great week, it was the third anniversary of Klaire’s death on Tuesday and as much as I tried to ride through it, it was bloody rough. It hit me much harder than I was expecting which led to my healthy eating and cutting out alcohol, going on the back burner. And very little activity. Emotionally draining, but life goes on and I was thankful and relieved that after a few days I managed to pick myself out of my grief pit with the thought of this event looming. I knew I was striving for that PB and with the friendly rivalry now going on with my friend and work colleague Rachel on our half marathon times, I wasn’t going to let myself down. 

As is usual fashion for me, apart from knowing the distance, I had no idea what the run entailed. So as we were being race briefed at 8:15am I found out it was a trail run! Yippee ( because I love trail runs) and oh ?$*% (because I wanted a PB and that’s harder on trail runs). But I knew the terrain was flat, so I’d be fine, right?! We got to the start which was quite a long walk as we had to get to the other side of the river from the event village. I always hang back with the crowd because I’m not an elite athlete 😂  but I somehow ended up right by the 1hr 45 to 1hr 55 wave. The gun went off for the wave and I just thought sod it, I’m going!

 The trail is very narrow for most of this run so it was single file a lot of the time. I had no choice but to go the pace of the person in front at the beginning and this was good - it stopped me going to fast. A quick check of my watch at 6km and I was bang on pace. Didn’t realise but I sped up for the next few km’s and when I checked my pace I knew I needed to slow down if I was to go the distance. The whole race I found really hard. I didn’t use music and the competitors weren’t a chatty bunch (is this the curse of the sub 2hr marathon runners?! That they loose their sense of fun and chat to achieve their goal....maybe?!). And talking about curses - my competitor number was 666, can you believe it? I didn’t know what to make of it when I picked up my number at registration that morning. I just hoped it wasn’t a bad omen! 

Very early on on the race I noticed my Strava app clocking up much more distance than the race markers and this continued for the whole event so by the time I finished, according to Strava I’d run 21.85km. Now I don’t mind a bit of extra distance but when you’re going for a PB and you’ve put a lot of effort in, this is highly highly annoying. Not just because you’re worried you might not get that PB but also you’re pretty exhausted by km 18 and your mental strength needs to come in to play to keep your race pace. Strava was saying I had 3km to go but the race markers said 4km and I found this a little soul destroying and this gave me a negative mindset. So I ran/walked the last few km’s. My body was fine but I felt a bit fed up. I went for it on the last km - always enjoy the last bit as I know I’m nearly there! By my calculations (Strava) I did 21kms in 1hr 58 mins. So I unofficially joined the sub 2hrs clan. Whoop whoop! My official chip time was 2hrs 2mins 45 seconds so regardless - I got a PB!!  I’ll have to wait for my next half marathon to do the sub 2hr officially! So the 666 wasn’t a bad omen after all. 

All in all it was a very enjoyable morning out in Windsor, I got to see Eton Dorney lake where I will be doing the swim leg of my London to Brighton Tri in August and if that wasn’t enough, there was a rowing regatta along the route and my old school LEH came 2nd in whatever race they were doing - there was me, some random shouting at the top of my lungs  “go LEH, go LEH” whilst running a half marathon haha!!

My next event is HUGE. It’s the London to Brighton Ultra on 25th/26th May. 100km over 2 days. My wonderful friend Erin is supporting me with provisions and encouragement at lots of the checkpoints along the way. This is the hardest event I have ever done in my life but the one I am most looking forward to! Till next time x