Now where was I??

Well once again it's been far too long since I updated my blog. I had said previously that I am finding it increasingly hard to find the time to keep updating my blog and that still seems to be the case, in fact even more so to be honest.

A lot has happened since I last updated my blog. There's been a fair bit of training, Sarah's sister, brother in law and 3 kids came to visit and I completed my first official half marathon.

To cut down on a really long and (probably) boring post, I won't go into details on the training runs, except to say they have been fairly uneventful, and they have been squeezed in when and where we could. As I said Sarah's sister, husband and 3 kids came to stay last Thursday for a week and our schedule was kinda messed up a bit because of it, although I didn't mind one bit, because I really enjoyed their stay. The 3 kids were absolutely adorable and even though it was a tight squeeze in the apartment and things got a bit hectic sometimes, I'm really glad they came over to visit, it was great to spend time with them. I also met Sarah's brother in law Rob for the first time who has done a bit of a running himself but with the 3 kids he finds it hard to get out a lot. Having said that, he has a huge interest in fishing and seems to find the time to get out and do that. Ha. Still we all have our first loves, and the way Rob speaks so enthusiastically about fishing and how technical it is, really got me interested in it, and I'm hoping I get the chance to go fishing with him sometime soon. It'd be a nice way to relax I reckon.

So back to the running and my first official half marathon.
The one thing more than anything that worried me about the Adidas Half Marathon last Saturday was the 10am start. Now I know that's not early morning or anything, and I'm well used to getting up early as I have to be up for work everyday at 6am, but having run all our training runs in the evening after work or early afternoon on Saturdays for our long runs I was a bit apprehensive about how I would cope with an early morning run. My fears were ungrounded. I had no problem at all. I was up at 6.30 made a good breakfast of porridge, bananas and honey and made our way to the registration area in Castleknock college, having not been there before we didn't realise how far it was from the college to the start line and if it wasn't for the line of traffic from the park that early in the morning I'm sure we would have thought we had gotten lost.
After registration and picking up our goody bag we made our way back to the park and soaked up the atmosphere of our first race, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Sarah was getting very nervous about the race, but I just reminded her that we had run this course before and that we had also run further than 13 miles before and she shouldn't worry.
I told her we were going to run our own race and not worry about anyone around us. We would use this as purely a warm up for the big event and to see how we reacted in a real race situation. Her nerves calmed a bit, but I think it was more a mix of excitement and the atmosphere that caused it more than anything else.
So as 10 am was approaching we made our way to the start line. We hung a good bit back from the front, knowing full well we weren't going to be keeping up with the people up there and we didn't want to be getting in their way, also we were determined to run the race at our 10 minute/mile pace that we want to do in the marathon.

10am arrived an past with no sign of the starting pistol, and the nerves started to build. We didn't have to wait too long though and just after 10.06 the pistol went and the crowd started to shuffle forward. It didn't take as long as I thought it would to reach the start line, only about 30 seconds and the pack started to open up fairly quickly, and a lot of runners were soon passing us out. I found it really difficult to keep my pace when everywhere we looked there were people overtaking us I was worrying we'd find ourselves at the back of the whole race and I could sense Sarah was feeling the same as we dropped further back, but I assured her that a lot of the runners that were sprinting by us now would be walking up the hill at mile 7 and mile 12 and then we would find our true position. Still the temptation to run past them was very strong, but we both resisted, and tried to keep our pace. Unfortunately we could not see the first mile marker so we had no idea how fast or slow we were going, I was fairly confident I was keeping the right pace but without conformation I didn't know whether to speed up or slow down.
Thankfully the marker for mile 2 was a lot easier to see and we reached it at exactly 19 minutes and 52 seconds. Bang on time.
With the crowds around us and the excitement, I didn't really notice the first 5 or 6 miles go by us, and by mile 7 we were heading back towards the start line and passing by the people that were sprinting by us at the start. It felt good and I felt strong.
As we headed back down towards mile 9 we had to run on the track and not on the road, things started to get a bit squashed and with people slowing it became difficult to run. I decided to move to the side and run on the grass and make some room for ourselves and overtake a few slower runners. We were really getting into our stride now and passing a lot of people some of who were walking by now.
Having carried a bottle of Gatorade with me for the race I didn't battle with the water stations until mile 10 when I grabbed a cup only to spill most of it all over me as I was trying to run.
Still on we went continuing to overtake people on our way. At mile 11 or so Sarah started to slow up she was feeling the effects a little, but I was feeling strong and I knew Sarah had plenty left in her and I tried to spur her on, she was having none of it though and I think she started to doubt herself. It wasn't until mile 13 when a girl we work with spotted us and started to cheer us on that Sarah perked up. She literally started sprinting for the finish line. We crossed the finish line in exactly 2 hours 10 minutes, exactly 10 minute per mile.
I was delighted that we had kept or pace so well. We went and re hydrated, done some stretching and made our way back to the finish line to find our workmate and thank her for the support.
She was no where to be seen but we did see a few people who had sprinted past us at the start finishing and it felt good to know we had run our own race and it paid off.

We made our way back to the college for some tea and cake before joining the long queue of cars trying to get out of the car park. Neither of us really minded the wait to get out of the car park as I think we were both delighted to have completed our first race as planned.

So that was it, back to the grind of training and an easy 4 miles on Monday, followed by 7 on Wednesday and 4 last night before our 18 mile run tomorrow.
I think we'll get up nice and early again and start our run at 9 - 10 am. I'm hoping it's as easy as last weeks run.