Today I ran my timed event, the Richmond ½ marathon. My target was 80 minutes, which I felt was a bit ambitious, I ran 83:24 at the same event last year, but surely that's the whole point of Jantastic? My plan was to run bang on 6 minute miles, which would give me a little bit of leeway and the chance to slow down in the second part of the race.
I set off quickly and after realising very early into the race that I wasn't going be able to hold the two in front of me I backed off the pace. However I still went through the first mile at 5:55. That was faster than planned, but the pace felt OK and mile 2 was ran at the same pace. I'd see what happened... There was a guy I was following who yoyo-ed between 10 and 50 metres in front of me for the next ten miles. The race runs around Kew Gardens and down the Thames River path. On a beautiful Sunday morning it was a fantastic place to run.
Mile 10 came and went and I was still running at 5:55; cool. I ate my gel and pushed the pace for the final few miles. I finally managed to overtake the guy who'd I been following for a lot of the race. I did encourage him to stay with me, but he dropped slightly behind. The last 400 m seemed to take forever, but I still smashed my target and finished in 77:33
.
One more week of Janastic, here's to hoping I can keep up my 100 %.
I managed to not turn on Strava for my run today and cannot remember how to enter the run manually.
Easy peasy:
click.