Day: 91
Distance: 21.04km
Distance: 21.04km
Time: 1:38:53 secs
Calories: 1,717
Brentwood in Essex is home to such vacuous non-entities as Jodie Marsh and Pixie Lott. The town also plays host to some, if not all, of the action documented in ITV1's study of social detritus "The Only Way is Essex". On the plus side Brentwood has also given us Jay from "The Inbetweeners" (or James Buckley to his mum and dad) and the Brentwood Half Marathon. This is the second time that I've done this 13 mile run through town and country and it deserves to be better known than Jodie Marsh, Pixie Lott and TOWiE put together.
I hadn't planned to take part this year, but after my friend Lauren injured her ankle a while back she asked me if I'd take her place and I gladly accepted having enjoyed last year's event so much. Another friend, Louise, was taking part and as she ran the London Marathon last year I thought we could run round together and I could get some helpful running tips off of her.
The race starts at 10am and we set off at around 8 mins/mile for the first 5 miles. To put that into some sort of context, I'm aiming to complete the London Marathon in 3:40 mins, so if I average 8 mins per mile on the day I'll complete the 26.2 miles in around 3.5 hours. In effect, 8 minute miles are actually quicker than I'm planning to do. So, I'm both surprised and pleased to find that this pace is very manageable and, as a result, after 5 miles I decide to up the pace.
I didn't set out with any intention of beating my time from last year (1:39:36), but I wanted to see what kind of pace I could maintain if I pushed myself a little bit more. A quick check of Run Keeper shows that after those first five miles I was averaging 7:23 mins/mile. It doesn't sound that much faster, but if I were to average that on the marathon (which, admittedly, is unlikely) my time would be around 3:13 mins - so it clearly makes quite a difference.
As I was running with Louise I decided to leave the ipod and my trusty running playlist at home. A few people have advised me to do the same for the London Marathon so as to experience the unique atmosphere and the support of the crowd, so it was good to try this out. While the crowd is considerably smaller for the Brentwood Half Marathon a lot of people do turn out to cheer you on along the way and some people stand along the course with bowls of jelly babies for the runners. I grew up in the '80s with parental scare stories about never accepting sweets from strangers, so I have to reluctantly decline their kind offers. As I take the final corner of the race I'm lifted by a big cheer from my four friends who have come out to watch Lou and I and I have to admit it's good to see and hear them so maybe I will leave the ipod at home on April 17th.
Brentwood Half Marathon uses Chip Timing and puts the results up on their website impressively quickly. The overall winner completed the course in a frankly frightening time of 1:07:21. That means he was averaging around 5:10 mins/miles. I don't know how someone gets to be that fast. I could probably shave a few minutes off of my time, but there's no way I could cut it down by 30 minutes. Crazy times aside, the website shows that I finished 309th out of 2,089 runners. That's based upon the 'guntime', but as Lou and I started off towards the back we didn't pass the starting line for a couple of minutes so I think that the 'chiptime' offers a better measure of my performance. It also happens to make my performance look better as it shows that I finished 268th out of 2,089 runners. Not bad for a morning's work. Not bad at all.
Brentwood in Essex is home to such vacuous non-entities as Jodie Marsh and Pixie Lott. The town also plays host to some, if not all, of the action documented in ITV1's study of social detritus "The Only Way is Essex". On the plus side Brentwood has also given us Jay from "The Inbetweeners" (or James Buckley to his mum and dad) and the Brentwood Half Marathon. This is the second time that I've done this 13 mile run through town and country and it deserves to be better known than Jodie Marsh, Pixie Lott and TOWiE put together.
I hadn't planned to take part this year, but after my friend Lauren injured her ankle a while back she asked me if I'd take her place and I gladly accepted having enjoyed last year's event so much. Another friend, Louise, was taking part and as she ran the London Marathon last year I thought we could run round together and I could get some helpful running tips off of her.
The race starts at 10am and we set off at around 8 mins/mile for the first 5 miles. To put that into some sort of context, I'm aiming to complete the London Marathon in 3:40 mins, so if I average 8 mins per mile on the day I'll complete the 26.2 miles in around 3.5 hours. In effect, 8 minute miles are actually quicker than I'm planning to do. So, I'm both surprised and pleased to find that this pace is very manageable and, as a result, after 5 miles I decide to up the pace.
I didn't set out with any intention of beating my time from last year (1:39:36), but I wanted to see what kind of pace I could maintain if I pushed myself a little bit more. A quick check of Run Keeper shows that after those first five miles I was averaging 7:23 mins/mile. It doesn't sound that much faster, but if I were to average that on the marathon (which, admittedly, is unlikely) my time would be around 3:13 mins - so it clearly makes quite a difference.
As I was running with Louise I decided to leave the ipod and my trusty running playlist at home. A few people have advised me to do the same for the London Marathon so as to experience the unique atmosphere and the support of the crowd, so it was good to try this out. While the crowd is considerably smaller for the Brentwood Half Marathon a lot of people do turn out to cheer you on along the way and some people stand along the course with bowls of jelly babies for the runners. I grew up in the '80s with parental scare stories about never accepting sweets from strangers, so I have to reluctantly decline their kind offers. As I take the final corner of the race I'm lifted by a big cheer from my four friends who have come out to watch Lou and I and I have to admit it's good to see and hear them so maybe I will leave the ipod at home on April 17th.
Brentwood Half Marathon uses Chip Timing and puts the results up on their website impressively quickly. The overall winner completed the course in a frankly frightening time of 1:07:21. That means he was averaging around 5:10 mins/miles. I don't know how someone gets to be that fast. I could probably shave a few minutes off of my time, but there's no way I could cut it down by 30 minutes. Crazy times aside, the website shows that I finished 309th out of 2,089 runners. That's based upon the 'guntime', but as Lou and I started off towards the back we didn't pass the starting line for a couple of minutes so I think that the 'chiptime' offers a better measure of my performance. It also happens to make my performance look better as it shows that I finished 268th out of 2,089 runners. Not bad for a morning's work. Not bad at all.
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