After a much more restrained week of tapering than I'm used to and plenty of carbs for a couple of days beforehand, it was finally race day. The gun went off at 7:45am which meant that being able to have enough time for my usual race routine made it an early morning for me! After a light breakfast, I sauntered down to the race start area armed with jellybeans, my pesto pasta and my wonderful supporter, to whom I am incredibly grateful for managing to get up so early on a Sunday morning just to accompany me to the start and pick me up, quite literally off the floor, at the finish.

After a bit of stretching and jellybean-scoffing, it was time to head to the start. I found the 1h40 pacer and lined myself up, somewhat optimistically, just ahead of them. Once the gun went off, I was away, weaving my way between other runners, trying not to get blocked in. I think the excitement of racing must have got to me though, because I started very fast, about 15 seconds/km faster than I had intended. On realising this, I should have done the sensible thing and slowed a little, just to be conservative but instead, I was feeling strong and passing people left, right and centre so I went for the risky strategy of seeing how long I could sustain this pace. Turns out, this was until about 11km. With half of the race still to go, my once-sprightly legs began to feel heavy and I started to worry that I had ruined my race. My pace slowed, I started feeling tired and low on energy and it was a little way until the next drinks station. It was to keep it up, but I tried. After a few mouthfuls of sports drink, I tried to pick it up a bit, luckily the route was very flat or I would have really struggled.

Unfortunately, I did end up walking through the next few drinks stations, it took a lot of mental strength and focus to keep it together when my mind, legs and lungs were all trying to get me to stop. As I approached the last few kilometres, I was able to pick up the pace a little, my body realising that there wasn't far to go now. Around this point was when the 10K runners joined us, which I have to say, wasn't the best bit of course-planning I've seen as having so many runners join us on a narrow stretch of road created somewhat of a tricky bottleneck. I was running faster at that point than most of the 10K runners joining me, it required even more hard work and more energy than I had to weave through them, pushing for the finish. Somehow, I managed a pretty decent sprint finish, passing people as I came down the home straight. Once I crossed that line though, the exhaustion really hit me and all of my mental focus went. I struggled just to walk in a straight line so sitting down to untie the timing chip from my shoes felt like an enormous struggle. Luckily, I had my supporter there to look after me and take exhausted-but-happy-looking photos of me with my shiny finishers' medal.

I ran the 21.1K in 1h42, which, at only five minutes slower than my personal best from when I was at my peak fitness, I was very happy with. After a year of not a lot of running and just five weeks of half-marathon training, it was pleasing to see what I could do and to come in as 27th woman out of a field of 800-odd was encouraging. So, this may be it, I may be getting my racing bug back after a little hiatus, I wonder where it will take me!