Sun - 06/10/19

I did the Cardiff Half Marathon.

I predicted my (chip) time to within 8 seconds!

To those who asked I said 1:45:00. My plan was to run with the 1:45 pace man and, at about 7 miles, decide whether to push on or not. At the start, the 1:45 mark coincided with the barrier between the white pen and the green pen. There were two 1:45 pacers in the green pen. There were two pacers with 1:45 on white flags but they disappeared and didn’t start the race. My plan scuppered?

As it happened I was able to judge my pace…err judiciously, particularly since a few of my chums who I might expect to be around me were around me. So my pace was pretty much as I anticipated for most of the race. There is a slight gradient at 3 miles, a climb up towards Cogan & Penarth. This is offset by a similar short descent down towards the Cardiff Bay Barrage. Taking that into account, I was fairly even paced until mile 10. This is where the toughness starts. As legs get weary there is, paradoxically, quite a tough climb up to and alongside Roath Lake! That slowed me down a bit. Then there is a bit of a descent on the other side of the lake. At the 12 mile mark there is the notorious “Beck Hill” a short sharp climb. It is named “Beck Hill” because, a few years ago, two of our Lliswerry Running chums, Gareth & Nicola Beck, established a “Motivation station” at that point where any Lliswerry runner daring to walk up the slope would be served up with a load of abuse. Friendly banter really, I hasten to add. The Becks were not in attendance this year. They have progressed to international Triathlon standard  and had other engagements. I walked up Beck hill in their absence with two other Lliswerry runners, Stuart Lukins and Nigel Foulkes-Nock. After the summit of Beck Hill, those two disappeared into the distance so that was two potential club championship points disappearing into the distance. More of that later!

In fact, more of that now!

This race is one of a series of races that makes up the Lliswerry Runners & Caerleon RC Club Championships. Before this race, the M65+ age group was delicately poised with me in second place eleven points behind Paul Dursley. Yesterday, I beat Paul Dursley by more than 10 minutes and there were 26 Male runners from Lliswerry and Caerleon RC between him and me.  Once these results are added to the running total I predict I will… still be 11 points behind him Paul. So much for fair scoring systems. Explanation… the way it works. The first club runner in an event gets 150 points, the second, 149 points and so on. The top 6 scores over the year are totted up for each runner. Because of the large number of our club runners in this event both Paul and my scores were low and will not count for either of us in the final reckoning. John Edwards is third in the table but he hasn’t run a marathon this year and thus has not been awarded 150 bonus points for running any race of marathon distance or more.  I’ve attached my spreadsheet so you can marvel at my use of the Excel “SMALL” and “LARGE” functions.

By the way, all runners who finished the Cardiff Half marathon had the opportunity to get a free pint of Brains beer by showing their medal to bar staff in a participating Brains pub. I had a pint of Brains SA in the Old Arcade.