New PB

I’ve had a couple of reasonably significant runs since we last spoke. Or, since I last spoke. You know what I mean.

Run home
The first run was the one I mentioned on Friday - I ran from work back home. As a run, it wasn’t that exciting, and only really significant in that 26k over hills is a bit of a breeze these days. I took it easy, due to the relative heat, hills and general laziness. I was done in about 2hrs 10 - roughly 5 minute ks.

It’s done, and over. Ho hum. I probably won’t do it again, unless I can come up with a more exciting route.

Burnley Half Marathon
The second significant run was the Burnley half yesterday morning, or “Advanced Freight Half Marathon” as it now like to be called.

It’s one of those AV events, which I always find depressing as I’m about the only person not in a snazzy uniform, and I feel about as fit as a slug. A lazy slug, at that.

I had a bit of a warm up of a few ks to get any stiffness out of the legs, then moseyed up to the start with Steve. The gun went off when I least expected it, and then everyone took off like a thousand scalded cats.

The first 5 ks were quite fast, self attempting to keep Tiger Boy (of Ausrun and Coolrunning fame) in sight. At 5k the guy called out 19.14 (”oh oh, that’s fast. better slow down”). At 6k he called out 23.05 (”damn, that didn’t work”). So I knew it was either going to be super fast or I’d start hurting soon.

I passed TB shortly afterwards - he didn’t seem to be having much fun at the time.

At 10k the time was 39.04 - not far off my (extremely soft) 10k PB. Again, I was thinking I’d gone out too fast.

At that point I came up to a bunch of AV guys who seemed to be taking it super easy - laughing and joking and stuffing around. For some reason it p**sed me off to think they could do so easily what was just about giving me a coronary. So I made it my mission to chase them down.

I did stick with them, though it might have been the end of this short life. I learnt a lot about their travel plans, what they do for a living, their thoughts on training techniques and what they think of various runners out on the course. I must have developed tunnel vision, as I completely missed Morsey and Em, who were apparently lurking on the sidelines.

I overtook my two chums with a k to go. V. gratifying.

The time was 82.02, which is about 4 minutes faster than the old time. Must remember to update that list on the right of screen.

Marathon
All this PB stuff brings me to a bit of a dilemma. The race pace calculators (McMillan and the like) gave me an expected marathon time, based on my HM, of 2hrs 52.

That’s not going to happen. Trust me.

But is a sub-3 possible? It could be…. Should I run with the 3 hour pacers?????

A dilemma.