Cardiff half marathon race report

I did the Cardiff half marathon on Sunday, here's a quick race report:

It was a beautiful crisp morning in Cardiff, with a new course reputed to be fast, very fast! My training hadn’t been ideal as I missed a few sessions due to fatigue (mis-timed taper/overtraining?), but my goal was 1:25 which would have brought me a PB of 3 minutes and I was quietly confident that if I had uninterrupted training I had a time of 1:25 in me.

I’ll apologise now for the mixture of km splits and mile splits; my GPS watch was in kph and I took a few splits from the mile markers on the route too.

I started near the front of the race, with 15,000 competitors I thought it would be best to get out in front to avoid the inevitable crowding on the route. I didn’t feel great in the first few miles. My breathing was ok and the pace wasn’t too fast, but I just felt a little fatigued, despite this I went through the 3 mile marker in a time of 19:33, bang on my target pace of 6:30-6:35 min/mile. I continued on, dodging fellow racers who had incorrectly positioned themselves at the start and got to the 5k point (on my GPS watch, so not 100% accurate) in a time of 20:14. I was now starting to feel good, the feeling of fatigue was disappearing and I was looking forward to the rest of the race.

The next milestone was the 10k mark (again on my GPS watch, so not 100% accurate) which I passed in a time of 40:40, again feeling good, feeling smooth and passing loads of other competitors. At this point you see so many people who had set off at an unrealistic pace, who are now really struggling; I felt a little sorry for them (well, not much really!)as they had another 11k of pain ahead of them.

The coolness of the morning was starting to lift and the heat was starting to rise, or maybe it was just me and I was starting to work hard! The next few miles went quite quickly as another triathlete starting chatting to me about Ironman (he saw my tattoo) and this made the time fly by. We were both starting to work a little harder now and the conversation dropped off as we approached the 10 mile point. I had wanted to get to the 10 mile marker at or around 65 minutes and was nicely surprised to see 64:40 on my watch (I was ahead of schedule!) as I passed this point. Little did I know at the time, the course had changed slightly and was a little short (about 180m according to my GPS watch), so the 10 mile marker was probably 180m short, which means in real terms I was bang on schedule for a time of 1:25.

I started to lift the pace now and dropped my new friend. Many, many people were now struggling and you could see the pain on their faces! I could see a few guys ahead of me who I knew from a local 5k series and targeted them as my next people to pass (I spoke with them before the race and they both wanted to do 1:25, but they raced off at the start, way too fast in my eyes!). I passed them very quickly as they were both starting to suffer. I got to the 12 mile point and I was really pushing now. The finish area was a strange kind of out and back loop which seems never ending and threw a lot of people as it looked a lot shorter than it actually was. I was probably pushing a little too hard now, but the crowds were cheering very loudly! Then I heard Team Whittle (my wife, my 2 nieces and my Mum & Dad) cheering me on and that pushed me on again! I turned into the home straight, it was about 400m to go and I just gave it my all, it was not a pretty sight I'm sure! I knew I was going to go under 1:25; the only question was by how much.

I crossed the line in 1:23:39. A new PB of about 5 mins and I had achieved my goal of 1:25! I came 275th overall and 174th in my category, which I was very happy with. The officials from the race stated after the race they had to shorten the course by 193m due to an obstruction on the course, this upset a few people as they were after qualifying times for London, but it didn't bother me. At my pace I would have been about 40 seconds slower on a truely accurate course, so still well under 1:25, happy days!

It’s time for a rest now before I start preparing for a short training camp in Fuerteventura at the end of November. I guess I should learn how to swim and ride a bike again before heading out there! Train (and race) smart all!