Worthing Half Marathon 2017 - 4th Female
I had been feeling unwell the previous week and had to take 3 days off – not ideal when marathon training! I was nervous as I always want to give races my all and I don’t like having an excuse. The weather looked horrible, wet and windy (as it often is on the seafront unfortunately!) but it’s race day and I need to use this half marathon to see where my fitness is at.
Off we went with the wind behind at first, I knew because of this that the first mile would be a little bit quicker than overall, but when we turned and the wind was against us, I didn’t want to slow down, my legs felt fresh and I felt good! I kept in a pack for the first few miles with Helen Buller and Emma Macready (pictured in their green Worthing harriers racing vests above) and I felt like the pace was good, hard but comfortable and mile first 4 mile splits were 6:01, 6:08, 6:04, 6:06. I kept plodding on and tried to concentrate on getting a good leg turnover going because I had been getting tight hamstrings and gluts recently and the tightness seems to come on after 8-9 miles. It wasn’t long before Helen was off, she’s been running really well recently and is concentrating on running 2:45 for the Brighton Marathon this year (fingers crossed for her for great weather and a great run, I’m sure she will do well). After 7 miles we hit the seafront again and had the wind behind for a few miles before we turned back, I couldn’t keep up the pace at this point and I could feel myself struggling. My coach Allison Benton was shouting encouragement at several points on the course and I wanted to run well for her today, but the pace was slipping and I knew I had gone out too fast. We hit the last turnaround and it was 3 miles with the wind against you to the finish, at this point I was in 2nd place, this kept me going as much as I wanted to stop, I knew the time wasn’t going to be great today but I couldn’t give in and there’s less than 5k to go! I thought it was just Emma behind me and at that point I thought I had a good lead, but I was overtaken by another female I didn’t know with about 2.5 miles to go and I just couldn’t go with her, I was exhausted, it was hard running against the wind. So now I’m in 3rd female position, still good, but I know Emma (who wasn’t far behind), has a decent finish and is a fantastic runner, I would really have to work hard to hold onto 3rd place. Which unfortunately I couldn’t, I gave it my all but Emma was stronger, she overtook me with just under a mile to go, I tried really hard to go with her but she was a lot stronger and had a lot more to give. I ran as hard as I could to the finish and I finished as 4th female in 1:22:21. A tough race! I still got a decent £80 running shop voucher as a prize for 4th place so it wasn’t all so bad. Overall mile splits were: 6:01, 6:08, 6:04, 6:00, 6:06, 6:14, 6:14, 6:17, 6:24, 6:22, 6:31 & 6:27.
