The Royal Parks Half Marathon was my first full-blown race, officially-timed, and my first attempt at the 21.1K distance. Never did that distance before, even during my practise runs, and my body is screaming at me not to do it again. But we’ll see.

The race was pretty comfortable for the first 10K, but when I hit 13K, my hip started to hurt and I had to drop down to a walk to recover.

The remaining race was much slower than the first half with my hip and my hamstring (both of them) hurting like hell. Even when I got to towards the finish line, people were walking. One of them had pulled muscle, so I stopped to help him out for a bit. He was concerned about my time, but as long as I finish, I’m happy.

I got over the finish line in 2:03:35 according to Endomondo, and my official time was 2:07:33. Considering this was my first half marathon, and I managed to average 6:00 min/km (I hit 20K at 2:00:00).

It was a painful journey home too. My legs hurt like hell, climbing up or down stairs made the pain spike, but it’s getting easier now.

I don’t think I’ll be running a full marathon any time soon, until I can get the Half Marathon distance down comfortably. It was really hard going at the end:

And plenty of new achievements and awards from Nike+