This race was big for me as it was my longest run of the year and my first big event coming from injury. As I am training for a marathon, I knew that I needed to start ramping up my mileage and eventually get a Half Marathon in. Luckily for me the Milton Keynes Winter Half Marathon has been postponed from last year due to heavy snowfall so it landed at a great time for me.
I started racking up the miles before even starting the race. The event village was around 2.5 miles from the station I came into so I started with a nice walk as I was early as always. The event village was quite crowded when I arrived. Standard food tents and merchandisers selling there wares. As I only had 5 mins left (the start time was delayed by a few minutes) it was off to a very long bagdrop queue and straight to the start line.
My goal was to finish under 2 hours. I wasn’t going for my PB of 1:51 but I knew that if I maintained a consistent pace I’d be good for that time. I was actually surprised with my performance, in a good way. I couldn’t see any pacers (probably something these guys could work on for future events) so I was focused on maintaining a 6min km all the way through (according to my Nike app). Along with that, I didn’t stop to rest once which is actually a first for me and I just kept going!
It was a very comfortable run and when it came to the final 2km I would say I got faster and managed to take at least 40 seconds off of my time by exploding with energy (even though it was quite a long downhill finish). I ended in style with a sprint finish and felt as if I could have kept on going for a few more miles if need be. This is a great sign as I haven’t lost my endurance; in fact I feel stronger on the other side of injury which was one of my biggest worries. My final finish time was 1:58:00, so not a personal best (Oxford Half 2017 still holds that title of 1:50:27) but within my target time and done without much trouble.
Did you take part in the Milton Keynes Winter Half Marathon? How did you do on the day? What is your next race? Let me know in the comments below and thanks for reading.
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