Cricklade Half Marathon with an Eight Mile Warm-up 2011-10-02

The Cricklade Half Marathon is my third in four Sundays and the third in a row with absolutely no workable public transport options: the first bus from Swindon is schedule to arrive at 10:28 on Sundays, two minutes before the gun but you have to pick up your credentials BEFORE 10:15 in order to run.  Well done, me: screwed yet another way by race promoters’ insensitivity to the motor-less.  For Chippenham ½ Marathon, I opted to stay out west from whence I COULD travel by a mix of buses and trains to get within a mile of the start; for Oxford ½ Marathon, I spent the evening prior snoozing on the floor of my lab office.  This time I opted to run to the start from my house, a mere 8 miles (which I tackled by running 10 minutes then walking 5 until I got to the race station), so the chance of the Personal Best time was pretty much a wash before the day even arrived.  It seems that if you don’t have a car for the organisers shove adverts onto the windscreen then you don’t really count.

The Race itself was fairly pleasant and truly dead flat.  I think the largest elevation change was about two meters over a mile long section.  The field was right around 260 runners, and there was a relaxed atmosphere to it (there are always a few there at the start a little too into it, and a few others excited and a bit intimidated by their first race, but for the most part it seemed like a bunch of folks just going out for a little trot in the sunshine).  I fell into pace behind some guys that seemed to be doing about a 1:45-1:50 pace and listened to their chat for roughly 10 miles before one of them suddenly fell back and his buddy stayed with him.  This left me without pace ponies for the last little bit and I may have slowed a little on my own (after the initial commute to the start I didn’t have much left for a finishing kick).

My chip time was 1:50 flat, my worst finsih of a half ever but tacked onto the 1:05 initial warm-up this was a good LSD trip of under 3 hours for 21 miles.  Heh…LSD trip.