My first post is a rather in medias res affair – On a very brisk, sunny morning (Sunday 6th of March) I successfully completed my first significant run of the year at the Jones o Gymru Anglesey Half Marathon.
A quick look through the event details the night before revealed that I would need to arrive with the dawn chorus to reach Anglesey with a comfortable window to register. In spite of this, my addiction to the snooze button nearly proved my downfall. Having roused myself sufficiently to appreciate the time, it pierced my consciousness like the shrill starters gun for a race against time. I left the house wild-eyed and half dressed, coffee in hand and a bag of Brazil nuts in the other riding an adrenaline wave.
Nonetheless I managed to convince a friend to collect my racing number before the deadline to compensate for my tardiness and managed a very brief pre-run warm up before lining up on the start line (on time!) that was situated on the iconic Menai Suspension Bridge.
The Anglesey Half marathon follows the coast from the Menai Suspension Bridge to Beaumaris Castle, and back. This route had an imposing, but beautiful backdrop of the Snowdonian mountains that made the race twice as difficult – doubly breath taking!
I like to use the mobile phone app Run Keeper in order to keep a handle on my pace throughout the race, but due to the remote location the application lost my position a couple of miles in so I was left running in the blind old skool fashion. As I was treating this race as a gauge of my fitness rather than as an event I wanted to conquer I intended to try and keep a pace of around 7 minutes and 30 seconds per mile. Without technology to let me know whether I was close to achieving this I decided to use other runners as pace setters. This seemed like a great choice early in the race and to my surprise I felt strong until the 8-mile milestone. The last couple of miles were a painful struggle and I was reminded that running is as much about battling the internal drives, as it is the competitors on the road.
Mental strength is definitely something I hope to post on more in the future, as in the context of endurance events; it can be just as severe a limitation on performance as a poor physical condition. Indeed battling the reptilian brain, the autonomous perceptions of fatigue that encourage you to stop are key because they are realised before the true physical limitation is reached.
I eventually managed to finish in a time of 1 hour and 31 minutes and 50 seconds that corresponded to a position of 69th overall. I was relatively pleased with this result given that my preparation largely revolved around a cake-eating marathon (more on this soon!).
For those that are interested here is the link to the Jones o Gymru Anglesey Half Marathon
runningforcakedotme 